Following Monday night’s latest round of cuts, the Avalanche’s roster now sits at 30.

Colorado announced after a 6-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights that Sean Behrens, Jean-Luc Foudy, Jere Innala, Jayson Megna, Trent Miner, Jason Polin, and Matt Steinburg were all reassigned to the Colorado Eagles’ AHL training camp. The team also cut Jack Ahcan, Matthew Phillips, and Calle Rosen, but the trio need to pass through waivers before joining the Eagles.

With that, the Avs roster now consists of 19 forwards, eight defensemen, and three goalies. Here’s how it breaks down:

Forwards

If you eliminate Valeri Nichushkin, Gabriel Landeskog, and Artturi Lehkonen from the group, the remaining forwards vying for an opening night roster spot is 16. We pretty much can pencil in Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Jonathan Drouin, Casey Mittelstadt, Miles Wood, Ross Colton, Logan O’Connor, Nikolai Kovalenko, and Joel Kiviranta for nine of those spots.

The remaining three will be made up of Parker Kelly, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Ivan Ivan, T.J. Tynan, Calum Ritchie, Chris Wagner and Ondrej Pavel.

Tynan, Wagner, and Pavel stand out to me as the least likely options to be part of the 12 that suit up next Wednesday at Vegas for opening night. And from the remaining four, I would suspect Ritchie is going to play. I just can’t see the team sending him back to the Ontario Hockey League before giving him up to the maximum nine-game audition.

Bellemare is still on a PTO, but I’d suspect it’s either him or Ivan centering the fourth line on opening night. I think Bellemare has a slight edge because of his veteran presence and familiarity with the core group so they’d need to sign him to a contract before Oct. 9. This means one of Kelly or Ivan would round out the top 12 to start the season. But assuming the team carries 13 forwards, they would both be on the roster. Something like:

Drouin — MacKinnon — Rantanen
Kovalenko — Mittelstadt — Ritchie
Wood – Colton – O’Connor
Kelly – Bellemare – Kiviranta
Ivan

Defensemen

The eight blueliners remaining on the roster are the group we’ve spent ample time talking about. Head coach Jared Bednar said earlier in the week that he’ll likely carry eight defensemen to start the season. Since Nichushkin’s $6.125 million cap hit is off the books until he’s reinstated, it’ll allow Bednar and his staff to carry all eight blueliners while they asses which of the newcomers fit and which don’t.

As it currently stands, both Erik Brannstrom and Oliver Kylington have struggled at times. But I can’t see the team writing either of them off yet. I predicted before preseason began that those two would make up the third pair when the season begins, but I’ve flipped completely to the other two options. We know Bednar wants to see what he has with both low risk, high reward signings. And I’d assume they each get into at least a handful of games in October. But right now, the blueline looks something like:

Toews — Makar
Girard — Manson
de Haan – Malinski
Brannstrom, Kylington

Goaltenders

Not much of a surprise here either. The Avalanche will start the season with the same duo that ended last year, Alexandar Georgiev and Justus Annunen. With Miner getting sent down, the third remaining goalie still on the roster is Adam Scheel. The 25-year-old isn’t the Avs’ third best goalie option. I’d argue he’s not even the fourth. But I also wouldn’t read much into him eventually being the final goalie cut from camp.

Bednar mentioned at the start of camp that he’d like to get each of Georgiev and Annunen into three games. They’ve both already dressed twice with two games remaining. That says to me Sheel is sticking around to give each of them a night off either in Utah or Vegas to close out preseason action. Miner, who I’d say is comfortably the third best goalie in the system, will benefit from joining Eagles camp sooner rather than later.