Jared Bednar is staying as Avalanche coach, Joe Sakic and Josh Kroenke back coach

Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic confirmed Thursday at Colorado’s season-ending news conference that Jared Bednar will return behind the bench, along with the rest of his coaching staff

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Jun 11, 2026, 12:22 PM

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Jared Bednar is not going anywhere.

Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic confirmed Thursday at Colorado’s season-ending news conference that Bednar will return behind the bench, along with the rest of his coaching staff, after the Avs’ Presidents’ Trophy season ended with a Western Conference Final sweep against the Vegas Golden Knights.

“Yeah, he’s back,” Sakic said. “Coaching staff’s back. They’re all under contract. No plans to make any moves. Best coach for our team.”

Sakic made it clear the decision was not complicated.

“They respect him. They love playing for him, and that’s a big thing,” Sakic said. “When we look at it for this group, he’s the best coach for the group, and we’re confident in that decision… He’s not just the coach. He’s the voice of the organization. Like I said, the players really believe in him, and I’m going with the players.”

That settles the biggest question hanging over the Avalanche after another painful playoff exit.

Bednar is entering the final year of his contract, a spot NHL coaches of his stature rarely reach without either an extension or a change. Sakic said that is not the immediate priority.

“There’s a lot of people that are entering their last year of their contract,” Sakic said. “Right now, our priority is getting through the draft, free agency, trying to make our team as good as possible going into the summer.

“The rest of the stuff, we’ll push that down the line. We’ll figure out later in the summer on all that stuff. I don’t think he’s worried about it. He shouldn’t be worried about it. Contract talks will come when they come.”

So Bednar stays.

For now, the Avs are running it back with the winningest coach in franchise history. Bednar has delivered a Stanley Cup, four division titles, two Presidents’ Trophies and the most wins of any coach the organization has employed.

He also has not won a game past the second round since Colorado lifted the Cup in 2022.

That is the tension around the Avalanche right now. They are still very good. They also fell short again.

Colorado won the Presidents’ Trophy this season with a franchise-record 121 points. The Avs played strong hockey from September into May. Then Vegas shut them down, swept them out and left the franchise to sort through another long summer of what-ifs.

Sakic did not ignore the sting.

“We had a lot of reflections, a lot of internal conversations — players, staff, management,” Sakic said. “We all feel that we left something on the table, but you wake up the next day and you look to try and get better.

“We’ve got a great group. Yes, we had a tough, tough last week of hockey, but from September on, we won the Presidents’ Trophy. We had the most points in franchise history. We played really well against L.A., really well against Minnesota. We played against a team that, for that time, played better than we did. No excuses, but we’ll be ready for next year.”

The Avs’ ending was brutal. Their season was not — that was Sakic’s message.

Avalanche owner Josh Kroenke and Joe Sakic at the podium right now.

“Yeah he’s back, all the coaching staff is back,” – Sakic on Jared Bednar pic.twitter.com/IMJmQW1YXq

— Will Petersen (@PetersenWill) June 11, 2026

“Overall, it was a great year,” Sakic said. “Yeah, it’s disappointing. It stings. But we’ve still got a great hockey team here, and this team was built for a two-, three-year run. We still have most of the guys coming back. Their expectations, our expectations, I know the fans’ expectations, is to try and win a Cup. And we’re hopefully going to accomplish that next year.”

Josh Kroenke echoed the same view. The Kroenke Sports & Entertainment vice chairman said the final week cannot erase the work Colorado put together before it.

“If you’re just going to evaluate the last week of the season, obviously it was incredibly disappointing on a lot of levels,” Kroenke said. “But if you’re going to evaluate the season as a whole, there’s a lot of positive.

“Our job is to kind of take a step back, look at everything with no emotion — or at least once the emotion of the season wears off — and figure out how we can strengthen going forward.”

That roster work now falls back to Sakic.

Chris MacFarland left for the Nashville Predators earlier this month, and Sakic stepped back into the general manager chair “for the foreseeable future,” including through the NHL draft and the start of free agency.

His first public move was backing Bednar.

Kroenke said the belief inside the organization remains strong.

“There’s a core group of players that have been with the organization for a long time, and I think those guys are still incredibly hungry,” Kroenke said. “Joe and his staff are going to be back at the table looking at how they can improve the margins on the roster outside of our core group.”

The core is still Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Gabriel Landeskog and the foundation Bednar has helped build since taking over in 2016.

Bednar arrived as a last-second replacement for Patrick Roy. His first season was the worst since the team moved to Denver. Then came the climb. The development. The 2022 championship.

The Avs are chasing another Stanley Cup before this window closes — and they will try to do it with Bednar still behind the bench.