Welcome in to the Toyota Lounge for the DNVR Avalanche podcast, powered by your front range Toyota dealerships.

The NHL season is technically not over.

There will be at least one more game before it's officially over.

So that's a thing.

I didn't watch the last game.

I forgot what it, like I forgot it was happening. I had other things going on. And then I checked the score later and was like, oh, yep. Like, okay. I didn't watch it either because X-Menity went out. Oh, nice. But when the score was 8-1, I guess I didn't miss too much. Yeah. I did watch it. My dad put it on because we watched Lifetime movies together, and after the last one finished, he didn't want us to get trapped in another one, and new hockey would be the break that we needed. There you go. I don't know if I would call that game a break. Yeah. And then by the end of the first period, you guys were doing something else. True.

No, not the main topic of today, though.

Today we're focusing in on the Aves Free Agency talks, which I'll be up front with you.

The majority of the work the abs have to do this offseason is their forward core,

flushing that out, figuring out where guys are going to go.

But because of that, the defensive conversation has flown under the radar a little bit for the abs.

They, at minimum, will have one defensive spot to fill externally, possibly two, depending on how you see things.

And I know we've talked about this side of it before,

but let's start here.

Do we all see Sam Malinski as a full-time NHL or next season?

I mean, he should be.

I hate this answer so much because it's right.

Yeah, he should be.

I just don't trust them to do it. Yeah. Do you trust them to give him a chance up front? Yeah. Like, I trust him, I trust them to give him, like, decent competition that come preseason time. We could be like, he could beat that guy out. You know, he, yeah, he could beat that guy, that guy, you know, whatever. but like I don't think they're going to go out and be like he could beat that guy out you know he yeah he could beat that guy that guy you know whatever but like I don't think they're going to go out and be like all right here's three sure

sure fire NHL guys dropped in front of him yeah without the removal of another one um so I think

yeah I think that he'll they'll definitely look at him and say yeah we want we want him to

compete we signed him he played a quarter of the season for us last year he showed really well

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