The pros and cons of every Avalanche offseason move

The NHL offseason is essentially over and the Colorado Avalanche’s title defense will begin in the next week when rookies begin officially reporting for camp and the annual rookie tournament.

Before getting to that, I want to look back on the offseason and see how it all went for the Avalanche.

With a limit on resources, there was only so much the Avs could do as their trade assets have largely dried up and they had roughly $25M in cap room to sign players.

With the dust settled, they have about $1.9M in space remaining, give or take a few hundred thousand dollars depending on how you construct the roster. That’s enough room to still do something and a good headstart on an expensive in-season acquisition if that’s the route they decide to go.

Instead of the classic grading format, I decided to lean into more of a look at the pros and cons of each of these moves. No passing judgment, just presenting the risks and rewards each of the deals offers. Let’s dig in.

Sign Andrew Cogliano for 1-year, $1.25M deal

Pro: I mean, isn’t it obvious? Not only do his teammates (especially Nathan MacKinnon) absolutely adore Cogliano, but he was nothing short of awesome in the postseason. He was an unbelievable warrior, blocking shots while his body was already breaking down and giving every last ounce of energy to the pursuit of his first Stanley Cup. He is the embodiment of every single trade deadline acquisition stereotype except it actually worked.

He scored big goals, he killed penalties, and he was an emotional center point of the team’s ability to get to the finish line when things got hard in the Stanley Cup Final. His skating and try-hard attitude remain perfect fits in Colorado.

Con: Remember that part about his body breaking down? Well, time only moves forward and Cogliano just turned 35 this past June. He’s obviously not on the roster to be a reliable point producer, but the six points in 16 games he had in the playoffs likely isn’t to repeat itself during the regular season. That 0.375 PPG would be his highest since 2017-18, which is the last year he eclipsed 30 points.

He has his role, obviously, but his decline has been steady and significant. Health is always a concern for guys his age who play with his conviction. The fit is great, but there are fair concerns about the 82-game trek that happens before he goes full warrior again.

Sign Darren Helm for 1-year, $1.25M

Pro: Everything I said about Cogliano pretty much applies to Helm, too. He was pretty forgettable during the regular season but found a completely different level once the playoffs got going. How much of a physical force was Helm during the playoffs? He had 114 hits in 68 games during the season and then followed it up with an absurd 97 in just 20 playoff games.

Helm also had a required important depth guy goal as his game-winning goal with just seconds left in regulation clinched Game 6 and Colorado’s berth in the Western Conference Finals against the Edmonton Oilers.

Con: He and Cogliano are kind of the same guy at this point. Helm is also 35 (he turns 36 in January) and his postseason is the primary reason he’s back for another turn in an Avalanche sweater.

Going with one of these two guys made sense, but both of them is an interesting decision from the Avs. I’m not sure they can rely on lightning striking twice with both Cogliano and Helm having such outsized impacts on the playoffs.

Sign Josh Manson to 4-year, $18M deal (4.5 AAV)

Pro: Manson was a very good fit in Colorado once he found his comfort zone, first playing next to Sam Girard and providing him the perfect complement before Girard’s injury ended his postseason. Manson also seemed to really love playing in Colorado’s aggressive attack-oriented style of play as he showed significantly more offensive ability compared to the majority of his career in Anaheim.

In fact, Manson’s PPG in Colorado not only increased in the regular season but took a bigger leap in the playoffs. His penchant for penalties slowed enough in Colorado that it wasn’t a real problem and his rough, hard-nosed style brought a dimension the Avs absolutely needed on the back end. What was different about Manson is that he brought the added snarl without sacrificing the kind of puck-moving basics the Avs ask of their defenders.

Manson looked like a completely different player in Denver than the guy who has struggled with injuries the last few years with the Ducks. Bringing him back gives the Avs two legitimate options for a “second pairing” and gives the Avs a perfect left-right balance with three each.

If Colorado’s defense largely stays healthy, they’ll be able to mitigate Manson’s bad nights very well.

Con: Manson was a lowkey nightmare early in his Avalanche tenure. If that ends up being more of the player we see than the version in the playoffs, Colorado is on the hook for an expensive third-pairing defenseman who has had a lot of recent injury problems and will turn 31 before the start of the regular season.

Even with things going better in the postseason, Manson was not even close to an analytical darling and struggled to break even in shot metrics as they got deeper into the postseason.

His worst games were absolutely brutal and the Avs were lucky (and plenty good, of course) to outscore their problems in the playoffs when Manson was having an off-night, which seemed to only end in disaster every time he touched the ice.

At nearly 31 already, the Avs are very likely paying for Manson’s decline from impact defender to potential retirement. How fast it happens will really dictate how good this contract ends up being.

Sign Artturi Lehkonen to 5-year, $22.5M deal (4.5 AAV)

Pro: Lehkonen led the Avs in game-winning goals in the playoffs (4) and scored the series-clinching goals in both the conference finals and Stanley Cup Final. So, you know, the clutch thing that people love is clearly there.

Lehkonen also was an exceptional fit as a skater and forechecker in Colorado’s system. You really couldn’t have asked for a more perfect fit between player and team in terms of style of play. Lehkonen’s production was already a career-best in Montreal but it actually got even better upon his arrival in Denver.

The regular-season scoring gave way to a great postseason and at just 27 years old, Lehkonen’s deal is the perfect length to reward a career year but without overcommitting to a player’s likely decline.

The AAV is high enough immediately that he should be somewhere in Colorado’s top six but as he ages and the salary cap likely rises, Lehkonen’s deal has a real chance to provide surplus value beginning immediately. This is especially true if Lehkonen plays the majority of this season in Colorado’s top-six forwards, which is the expectation.

Con: Always be wary of guys who had career years in contract years. It’s a real thing that happens where players give that little extra because they know they have the big contract waiting for them at the end of the line.

To be honest, that’s about the only negative I can conjure up about Lehkonen’s deal. He’s scored 19 goals in each of the last two years without an obscene shooting percentage, but if he reverts to the form he showed earlier in his career (he shot just 8.5% in his first five years) this could be a contract the Avs come to regret a little.

Trade for Alexandar Georgiev, sign him to a 3-year, $10.2M deal (3.4 AAV)

Pro: He’s just 26 and was viewed as recently as two years ago as the starter-in-waiting for the New York Rangers. His talent has jumped off the ice enough that there are many believers in Georgiev around the league and it disappointed a bunch of teams when the Avs were the ones who got the jump on the goaltender carousel this year.

Remember last year when they waited to be the last team to make a move and it ended up being very expensive to trade for Darcy Kuemper? The Avs avoided a repeat of that by being the first team to make a big move at the position and really help set the tone for the market. The Avs clearly believe Georgiev is capable of not only handling a starter’s role, but doing so for a team capable of winning another Stanley Cup.

As a very talented starter who was miserable in the situation he found himself in New York, where he went from backing up all-time great Henrik Lundqvist to opening the door for phenom Igor Shesterkin, Georgiev has already experienced enough adversity in his NHL career that he should be mentally prepped for the role the Avs will be asking of him.

If he hits and the Avs are right, they have a goalie in his prime on a very fair contract for the next couple of years to build around.

Con: Statistically speaking, Georgiev has gotten worse each season in the NHL, bottoming out last year with the Rangers with a sub-.900 save percentage and some raw feelings about his place in the organization.

In a vacuum, it’s a tough sell for the Avs to lean heavily and so confidently on a player who has been on a decline his entire NHL career. They gave him the standard backup-turned-starter contract, but it still felt too rich for a player who, I re-emphasize this because I think it matters, has been a little bit worse each year of his career. He’s never been a true full-time starter and now he’s been given the net of the defending Stanley Cup champs.

If things don’t go very well, it’s short enough and still cheap enough the Avs should be able to find a taker as they look for a different answer at the goaltender position.

Sign Valeri Nichushkin to 8-year, $49M deal (6.125 AAV)

Pro: Arguably the greatest reclamation project in Avalanche history, Nichushkin has gone from a player who went goalless in over 90 consecutive NHL games to one who seemed unstoppable in the Stanley Cup Final. He had quiet moments in the postseason but he was an absolute force at his best and a defensive nuisance at his worst.

Nichushkin elevated his game in Colorado’s top six last season and he’s ready to step permanently into the world of expectations with the Avalanche.

An eight-year deal is the ultimate commitment from Colorado, the kind of show of faith that teams only really hand out to players they believe are part of their core and they simply couldn’t afford to lose.

The defensive excellence combined with the chemistry found alongside Colorado’s top players made it easy for the Avalanche to ink him to a deal that will keep him well into his 30s.

 Con: Well, everything I said earlier about being iffy on buying into anomalous years when the big contract is on the line applies to Nichushkin in the biggest way. He had never surpassed the 34 points he scored as an 18-year-old rookie in Dallas back in 2013-14 until this past season as he was staring down the barrel of free agency.

Scoring was up across the entire league and Nichushkin still scored just 52 points. It’s not that that is a low number, obviously, but the 52 points was tied for 102nd in the NHL among forwards in scoring and his new contract has him tied for 68th among highest-paid forwards in the league.

Granted, he played just 62 games and his PPG pace had him at roughly a 68-point season, which is pretty damn good.

Not all of Nichushkin’s value is tied to his scoring, of course, but when a player gets an eight-year contract and it has a high AAV on it, he no longer can have a down year offensively and shrug it off with an excuse of excellent defense making up for it. He has to do both.

The Avs made an enormous leap of faith with this deal and if it works, they should be in the Cup chase for several years. If it doesn’t work and Nichushkin ages out of effectiveness earlier than expected, this is the kind of contract that becomes an anchor around the neck of an organization.

Sign Evan Rodrigues to 1-year, $2M deal

Pro: It’s not particularly difficult for players to live up to deals this cheap, especially on one year. Rodrigues is coming off a career year in Pittsburgh that, in theory, should have seen him get a little more security than he ended up with and rumor has it there were multi-year offers out there for him but he chose the opportunity in Colorado instead.

That opportunity would appear to be the first crack at the Nazem Kadri-vacated 2C job. Rodrigues has sparkling underlying numbers and appeared to be a breakout player in the first half of last year as he got the best opportunity in his career while the Pens dealt with endless injuries.

A perfect stylistic fit, Rodrigues is the kind of smart buy-low option that, at least on paper, keeps the Avalanche offense humming along. Even if he doesn’t quite live up to that job and loses the 2C job to Alex Newhook, he remains a valuable piece for Colorado’s bottom six, as well.

The versatility is great, the fit is great, and the price tag is very low. It will take a real disaster for this not to be worth it.

Con: The second half of the year for Rodrigues was more like the rest of his career: underwhelming. As the Pens returned to health, his ice time was cut and his production went down. All of that seems natural, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate a player capable of elevating a line.

If Rodrigues is simply a product of the environment he’s in, you almost have to overplay him to get that value from him. His track record of success is basically the first 50 games of last season and for a player who is 29 years old, well, that’s not super encouraging.

Overall, it’s going to be hard to really pick this apart unless Rodrigues reverts to some of his Buffalo form where he didn’t look like he belonged in the NHL at all for stretches. It’s unlikely, but a possibility.

Sign Nathan MacKinnon to 8-year, $100.8M deal (12.6 AAV)

Pro: This sets MacKinnon up to really be an Av for life. Like, actually. Given he’s currently on a Hall of Fame career arc, that’s the kind of thing you want as an organization. The Avs have a leading man through the rest of his prime as he chases that ever-elusive Hart Trophy or, even better, a Conn Smythe to add to his collection of hardware.

The deal makes him the highest-paid player in the league for now, but as other stars sign new contracts along with the expected spike of the salary cap, this designation is only temporary. While he won’t ever again be a value the way he was the second half of his last contract, MacKinnon could still be a pretty good value in just a few short years as the salary landscape evolves.

From an on-ice perspective, the Avs have locked up their franchise center and franchise captain for eight years each in the last 16 months. That’s just great business.

Con: The reality here is that MacKinnon’s deal expires before the start of his age-36 season. There’s a good chance he simply won’t be worth that money in the last few years of this contract. That’s the price of locking up elite players, however, so while it is the likeliest outcome here, MacKinnon is the kind of player you just live with whatever decline comes. If the Avs get lucky, it will be minimal and his fanatical approach to nutrition staves off Father Time a little more.

Beyond that, there’s really not much of a con here. It’s obviously a lot of money but MacKinnon is a no-doubt top fiveish player in the NHL. He’s worth it.