Avalanche still don’t have room for upgrades despite cap dumps
You get what you pay for, the old saying goes. As the Colorado Avalanche are learning, the inverse of that saying is also true; you pay for what you get. The Avs have one of the game’s most talented rosters, sporting stars like Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, and Martin Necas. In the salary-cap era of the NHL, however, talented rosters become expensive pretty quickly.
Colorado did make a couple money-saving moves recently. They sent forward Jack Drury to the Nashville Predators on Wednesday, and then traded forward Valeri Nichushkin to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday. Still, they won’t exactly be flush with cash once free agency opens on July 1st.
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed how the Avalanche can approach this offseason with limited cap space.
Tyler Yaremchuk: For Colorado, that’s probably where this conversation is a lot more interesting. They’re now sitting at $11 million in cap space. They have 11 forwards signed, four defensemen and two goalies. You basically have $11 million to sign anywhere from three to five players to fill out a roster. They’ve lost a decent layer of depth here. They’ve lost a pretty important piece in Nichushkin. I know some people are saying “You’re moving on from these guys to go swing for a big fish.” Pete Blackburn even speculated about them taking a run at Dylan Larkin. I don’t think they have the money for it still. Shedding this cap space isn’t giving them that luxury amount of money. This is giving them enough money to fill out their roster and kind of just survive.
Carter Hutton: I think they’re good enough to get by on what they have, as well. You’re not really going to be forced into a market where you need to make a big decision immediately. I know free agency is not really going to offer that. If it is via trade or wherever it’s at, maybe you’re waiting and the market kind of starts to transition a bit.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Friday’s episode here…