Troy Renck: The long and short of it: The length of the resumes for Jared Bednar and David Adelman remains instructive when understanding the challenges they face this season. Bednar boasts 10 years of experience. Adelman lists three regular-season games and two postseason series. Both are operating under a mandate to win a championship. Their rosters demand deep playoff runs and no excuses. But who is facing more pressure to deliver: Bednar or Adelman?
Sean Keeler: Adelman has the Nuggets roster — and veterans — Michael Malone always pined for. If you’ve got a roster with Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon and Bruce Brown, parades and cigars aren’t just the dream. They’re the expectation. But a blank slate can work in his favor, too. Bednar doesn’t have that luxury. The Avalanche coach needs to win back some goodwill among Denver faithful after another early playoff exit and, good grief, another spring of being out-coached by Pete Bleepin’ DeBoer down the stretch. Adelman has to tackle community uncertainty. Bedsy has to fight community doubt. That last one is harder.
Renck: The knee-jerk reaction is that Bednar has less margin for error after getting ousted early in the playoffs in the three seasons since winning the Stanley Cup. He has been out-coached. But there is more pressure on Adelman because we are not sure he can coach. He guided the Nuggets to a playoff series win, and took the Thunder to seven games. However, it is easy to sell players on meritocracy and urgency in the postseason. Can Adelman manage egos and minutes over seven months? The players respect him. But he can no longer be the shoulder to cry on. He has to be more coach than couch, and make difficult, even unpopular, decisions. Can he? Umm, maybe?
Keeler: Adelman won the sprint. Now it’s about mastering the marathon. If he can’t learn to play “bad cop,” this locker room will run him over. It’ll take time. Time, by the way, that Bednar doesn’t have. The expectation at Family Sports Center is for the Avs to be title-ready from the jump. We know the captain, Gabe Landeskog, is back and can skate at a postseason level — load management is going to be the thing. We know Val Nichushkin is eligible to start the season — the hope, as always, is that he’ll remain there. Assuming Mackenzie Blackwood and Sam Girard are ready to roll, Bednar has all his veterans lined up. Old uncertainties are gone. So are old excuses.
Renck: Adelman deserves patience to sort things out. Here’s the problem with that thinking: This could be the last dance for this Nuggets’ roster as a contender. Nikola Jokic remains in his prime and should have three more great seasons. This is the deepest team he has ever had around him. But given the injury histories of Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon and the age of Jonas Valanciunas (33), this could be as good as it gets for Jokic in his bid to win another title. That leaves Adelman with a huge burden. No time for training wheels. The Nuggets are in a race to the top of the mountain, and they cannot be slowed by a coach figuring out how to shift gears on the climb. Bednar should get fired without a deep playoff run, but there is more pressure on Adelman to win this season.
Keeler: Bednar is heading into Year 2 of a three-year extension that runs through the end of the 2026-27 season, so the clock’s ticking. Big picture? The Avs are in a good place. Just not a great one. A legendary core isn’t getting any younger. Bednar’s deservedly built up a lot of political capital from the ’22 Stanley Cup championship — but each postseason that’s followed has whittled away the comfort. What felt like invincibility now feels more like inevitability. And not in a good way.
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