The first month of the 2022-2023 regular season was an odd mixed bag for me as the G.M. of the Avs.
In terms of my behind the scenes management work, I think I earned a solid F. Clearly I haven't mastered this monthly budget balancing act very well yet. Last season I tried to be careful to conserve points/funds for the offseason but when I got to the end of the fiscal year we were in the red. And now one month into the new season we remain so which means that our players are not happy with me as we are not spending any money on player morale, we are not boosting attendance through any promotional spending, and we are starving our scouting support budget.
In addition, I learned the hard way (not sure how I got into the 3rd season before realizing this) that I can only get my protected players under contract prior to the regular season, or I have to wait until my next opportunity next summer. With some early injuries and with at least a few of our recent draftees looking NHL-ready, I really could have used some depth down at our AHL affiliate. I can only hope that another year where they are won't hurt these prospects development.
Then there was the on-ice performance of the team. We lost our first three regular season games and I was beginning to feel like an abject failure.
Then a funny thing happened. In spite of poor morale and young, unproven players getting regular ice time, the team absolutely took off, dropping one game in OT and winning 11 games over the course of the rest of the month.
Perhaps the most most impressive win was late in the month when we traveled to take on the Calgary Flames, who at that point were leading the Western Conference. We beat them 5-1.
In addition, we beat up on the Detroit Red Wings (off to a horrible start) at home, 6-1. We took care of Arizona 6-3 on the road. And we finished the month with a 5-2 win on the road in San Jose.
We end the month with the most points in the NHL.
The two recently drafted rookies, LW
Milo Holland and RD
Josh Hishon, are both off to good starts to their NHL career and have already apparently surpassed their counterparts from the previous draft, C
Clark St. Croix and RD
Craig Woodard.
Aleksandr Dugin (7 goals, 10 assists) and veteran
Brian Hughes (6 goals, 10 assists) continue to be the points leaders on the club.
Nikolay Ivanov (5 goals, 11 assists) has also been on fire.
With an excess of talented defencemen, the Avs traded 31-year old LD Tomas Kovar and the rights to 19-year old RD Ash Naurato, who was our 7th round pick in the 2021 Entry Draft, to the Calgary Flames for their 4th round pick this coming summer. (Basically we needed to clear roster space for injured RD
Michal Lezak to return to the active roster from the Injury List.)
It was a crazy first month and I feel like I did quite a bit wrong but at least our on-ice performance seems to indicate that I haven't completely messed up the team just yet.