Reacting To Chris MacFarland Leaving Avalanche To Become Predators' GM And Hockey Ops President

It's not often you see one of the finalists for the NHL's Jim Gregory GM of the Year Award switching teams after that season.

That's precisely what happened Tuesday with the announcement that Colorado Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland has joined the Nashville Predators as GM and president of hockey operations.

"I know this is a proud organization with a solid track record of putting together teams that the fans of Smashville support wholeheartedly," MacFarland said in a statement. "My goal here is to build a winner, working with Bill Haslam, Sean Henry and our hockey operations staff and players to put a team on the ice that will compete for the Stanley Cup. I am excited about our future."

Since 2015, MacFarland had been serving in the Avalanche's front office under former star center Joe Sakic, and he was instrumental in the Avs winning a Stanley Cup championship in 2021-22.

MacFarland was promoted to GM in July 2022, but he was always answering to Sakic, who took the job as Colorado's president of hockey operations when MacFarland was promoted.

So the opportunity to have final say over a team's day-to-day operations was no doubt one of the reasons why MacFarland chose to leave the Avs and join the Preds.

We're not suggesting there was strife between MacFarland and Sakic. There's absolutely zero evidence of that. But the Predators surely made it worth MacFarland's while financially and geographically, considering he'll be closer to family in Nashville.

The opportunity to build what Nashville ownership hopes will be a year-in, year-out Cup threat was too good for MacFarland to turn down. 

In Colorado, Sakic resumed GM duties in addition to his role as president of hockey ops. He'll have those duties for at least the draft and the start of the league year.

"In Joe's previous stint as GM, he helped build the current roster and led us to the 2022 Stanley Cup," Kroenke Sports & Entertainment vice-chairman Josh Kroenke said in a statement. "We are confident in Joe's leadership and that we will continue to build upon our recent success as we seek to bring another Cup back to Colorado."

The Avalanche allowing MacFarland to leave for a Central Division rival makes the Vegas Golden Knights look even worse than they did when they refused to allow ex-coach Bruce Cassidy to interview for the coaching position with the Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings. 

The Avs took the classy route when they allowed MacFarland to leave for a division rival, even though Colorado hadn't fired him, as Vegas did to Cassidy.

This nonsense defending the Golden Knights' refusal to allow Cassidy to interview for the Oilers' and Kings' coaching positions has been exposed as the bunk that it is.

It matters how a team treats its employees, and the optics of Vegas' stubborn insistence to refuse Cassidy to find a new employer is only making the Golden Knights look worse with every passing day.

MacFarland wasn't named a finalist for the Jim Gregory Award by accident.

He built this year's best regular-season team, which was a leviathan in the first two rounds of the playoffs before getting swept by Vegas. So he's got plenty of evidence that he knows what he's doing.

MacFarland added effective players, such as Nazem Kadri, Brock Nelson, Scott Wedgewood, Mackenzie Blackwood, Brent Burns and Brett Kulak, over the past couple of seasons as part of his efforts to make the Avalanche a dynasty.

He also handled a difficult situation with then-pending UFA Mikko Rantanen and traded him in a blockbuster to the Carolina Hurricanes. Martin Necas was the main asset coming back in the deal, and he's done an excellent job with 100 points this season.

Now, MacFarland will try to make Nashville the Stanley Cup contender it tried to become two years ago under then-GM Barry Trotz, when it signed Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei in free agency but missed the playoffs.

But if you cover the game long enough, you see many hires like MacFarland's hire on Tuesday.

When an organization has success at the highest level, it makes everyone in their management tree very attractive to other teams as they chart a new competitive course. That's happened with the Detroit Red Wings when they were a regular Cup-winner, and that's happened more recently with the Tampa Bay Lightning as well.

Now, that's happened with the Avalanche.

Sakic always had the final word, so while MacFarland will be missed in Denver, the top of the Avs' management mountain will stay the same. But it's an exciting time in Nashville with MacFarland's hiring. MacFarland will put together his own blueprint for success, and while the Predators will still need patience as a new generation is built for the team, they've now got a crafty and bold decision-maker who has every motivation to prove the Avalanche shouldn't have let him leave.

If MacFarland wins the Jim Gregory Award, it won't look great for the Avalanche. But they did right by MacFarland by letting him move on, and that good karma the Avs created by letting MacFarland leave will reflect well on the organization. 

Colorado could've gone the Vegas route by not granting permission for MacFarland to leave. But the Avs did the right thing, and we'll now see what MacFarland can do when he's the person ultimately deciding how a team should be run.

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