Forward Miles Wood has only played one season with the Avalanche, but it feels like he’s been a part of the group for a long time, because the chemistry he has developed with his teammates has been excellent. He has also quickly become one of those fan favorite type of players because of his high character, goofy attitude and gritty hard work on the ice.
Miles was born in Buffalo, NY on September 13, 1995 – so he recently just celebrated his 29th birthday. He was a 4th round pick (100th overall) in the 2013 NHL Draft by the New Jersey Devils out of Nobles High School in Massachusetts. From there, he played one year of college hockey at Boston College before signing an entry-level contract with the Devils at the end of the 2015-16 season.
He played one game to end that season and then stepped in to be a regular in the lineup for the most part the next season, appearing in 60 games as a rookie. His career highs in goals and points came the next season in 2017-18 when he scored 19 goals and 32 points.
After spending the first 7 seasons of his career with the Devils, Wood became an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2023 and signed a 6-year, $15 million contract with Colorado. He fit right in on the Avs brand new third-line with Ross Colton and Logan O’Connor last year, before O’Connor missed the last 25 regular season games and the playoffs. He continued to play with Colton throughout the rest of the season, and they had multiple different line mates fill in for Logan.
In 74 games played in the regular season, Miles scored 9 goals and added 17 assists for 26 points in his first season in Colorado. These numbers are pretty much in line with what you would expect based on his career to this point. He came up pretty clutch in the playoffs for the Avs, scoring 3 goals in 11 games, including this memorable overtime game-winning goal in Game 1 vs Dallas:
The potential is always there for the speedy winger to add more offense, especially on a high-flying team like the Avalanche. There may also be chances for a guy like Wood to jump up and play with the top-six as they will likely be rotating some of their wingers up and down the lineup and on the power play to start the season while they await the returns of Gabriel Landeskog, Valeri Nichushkin and Artturi Lehkonen. However, it would be wise for Head Coach Jared Bednar to stick with this roaring 20’s line as a mainstay to start the season.
His character and work ethic on the ice has been a perfect fit for this group, and as long as he can stay healthy and in great shape, he should be a piece of this team for a while with five years left on the contract. His six-year contract was definitely a model the Avs used in signing their most recent contract as well, as Logan O’Connor earned himself a six-year extension, worth the same $15 million ($2.5M AAV).
With the possibility of Wood jumping up in the lineup at the beginning of the season, as well as getting his normal wing-mate O’Connor back, I feel he can have a bigger year offensively for the Avalanche. I’d expect somewhere between 70-80 games played, as he has never played more than 76 games in a single season, and in those games I think a fair projection for his season totals would be 12-15 goals, 15-18 assists putting him right around 27-33 points.
The Avs for a few years had really struggled to get any kind of secondary scoring behind MacKinnon, Rantanen and Landeskog, but now they have a consistent, hard-working third line that often gets highly rewarded for that hard work and endless skating.
Since day one of signing that contract last summer, Miles Wood has been a perfect fit on this Colorado Avalanche team, and that should continue into his second year with the club.
