Looming over every elite team in the league is the knowledge that, at some point, the salary cap constraints will become too much to handle.

That time is now for the Colorado Avalanche.

While they have their core of truly elite players locked up for at least one more year, the supporting cast that has propped them up as one of the scariest teams in the league over the last few years will, by and large, necessarily have to go elsewhere this summer. That’s the business in a nearly flat-cap world.

Indeed, the club is currently looking at nine pending unrestricted free agents on their roster, plus two more RFAs. And they have just under $25.7-million in cap space to work with — which sounds like a lot of money, but really isn’t when you have to rebuild half a forward group.

Not all of these UFAs a