Landscape-altering trade lands Nazem Kadri back with the Avalanche

After business was seemingly done for the Colorado Avalanche, they swooped in to make one of the most shocking deals of the season as they brought Nazem Kadri back from the Calgary Flames.

It was a week of ups and downs as the Avalanche pursued Kadri and Kadri shied away from engaging too much with other organizations as long as the Avalanche were still in the mix to land his services. After the Avs and Flames had landed on a trade package everyone was comfortable with, Flames ownership nixed the deal over having to retain some of Kadri’s $7M salary in the trade.

It has been reported elsewhere that Kadri’s disappointment made its way back to Calgary ownership and they ultimately decided to stop worrying about what became just $1.6M over the next three seasons and allowed the trade to go through in a move that will be lauded by players around the league. How owners treat players on bad teams, especially high-end free agent signings who are nearing the end of their careers, is something that flies under the radar and players keep their eye on when choosing which organizations to sign with.

The Flames had to have their arm twisted into doing right by Kadri, but the Avalanche ended up the beneficiary as Kadri wanted to come back to the scene of the greatest success of his career. The Avalanche were desperate to give themselves the very best chance they could to maximize their odds of winning the Stanley Cup this season.

The trade ultimately became:

COLORADO GETS:

• Forward Nazem Kadri (20% retained, giving him a $5.6M AAV)
• 2027 4th-round pick

CALGARY GETS:

• Conditional 2028 1st-round pick
• Conditional 2027 2nd-round pick
• Forward Victor Olofsson
• Forward Max Curran

The conditions on the first pick are that Colorado‘s pick is top-10 protected and will transfer to an unconditional 2029 1st if the 2027 1st they traded to Toronto yesterday in the Nicolas Roy trade doesn’t transfer because it is also top-10 protected.

The second pick’s condition is that Calgary will get the higher of the two picks the Avalanche have between their own and Minnesota‘s.

With that, the Avalanche landed the most overqualified third-line center in recent memory.

How is Nazem Kadri these days?

This is the fourth season since Kadri left the Avs in free agency back in the summer of 2022 in the post-Stanley Cup glow, but Kadri’s game has continued to age very well and he has been extremely productive in that time. In the previous three seasons, Kadri averaged 29 goals and 66 points per season, but those numbers were way down to just 12 goals and 41 points this year on a terrible Calgary team. That level of production is a bit of a concern, especially because Kadri is already 35, but let’s take a look under the hood and see what caliber of player the Avs are getting today.

To start, the player card.

Kadri was never a great defensive center, so it isn’t surprising that part of his game has aged the most poorly. He’s still been playing tougher competition and the Avalanche will be able to shelter him a bit more, but the finishing this season has really fallen off a cliff and that’s what you have to be the most concerned about right now.

It isn’t the first time Kadri has gone through this kind of a shooting slump, but his 6.9 shooting percentage is indicative of a player who is going through more of a slump than whose ability has been cut in half from last season. A team can live with that and hope to get better results if the process is sound. Let’s see how another model looks at that process.

This is…incredible, frankly. This means Kadri is one of the league’s premier play drivers offensively, while also being a consistently dangerous player on the power play (something that we surely know the Avs could use help with!). Defensively, this model likes Kadri’s play more than the model used for the player card above. We can ignore the penalty kill portion because he’s played only 3:40 of shorthanded time in 61 games, so that wasn’t really part of his role.

Looking even more under the hood, here are Kadri’s microstats.

This shows you a player who isn’t much for forechecking (centers usually aren’t because that isn’t their job), but he excels basically at every single thing that gets tracked in terms of what he does with the puck.

It’s not just that Kadri is playing well with the puck, but excelling. Despite his age, he remains a very good hockey player. As I wrote about a bit yesterday with Roy and his time in Toronto this year, the environment in Calgary has been worse than ever this season and it can be hard to separate a player’s numbers from that toxicity.

Kadri isn’t your average 35-year-old. This guy can still flat-out play and has been doing it at a high level with the Flames.

Where does Kadri fit into the Avalanche lineup?

This is a great question! With Artturi Lehkonen out for the next few weeks, at least, we could see an Avs lineup that may not be representative of a healthy Avalanche lineup at the start of the postseason. We also aren’t sure when Kadri’s immigration status will be cleared up, but Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland said he could be in Denver as early as tomorrow.

Let’s just assume the only lineup change might be Joel Kiviranta is healthy to play (he was out of the non-contact sweater today so his return is coming soon if it hasn’t already happened by the time you read this). Here’s the first go-round of a lineup I would like to see:

Landeskog – MacKinnon – Necas
Colton – Nelson – Nichushkin
Kelly – Kadri – Roy
Kiviranta – Drury – Brindley

That already looks like a pretty damn good lineup, but it is kind of a deep cut that the Avalanche paid two 1st-round picks and a 2nd-round pick to essentially improve their third line. That’s obviously an extremely reductive way to look at it, but it’s also accurate.

The difference, however, between Roy as 3C and Kadri as 3C is enormous. There’s also the possibility that the Avalanche could roll with Kadri at left wing until Lehkonen returns and they wanted to go with a third line of Colton-Roy-Brindley for a funny medium-big-small alignment.

When Lehkonen returns, however, they could really be in the money. I’m going to add Logan O’Connor to a healthy lineup because he skated with the group again today and the team has started expressing real optimism that he returns before the postseason begins. With that in mind, here’s my healthy lineup:

Landeskog – MacKinnon – Necas
Lehkonen – Nelson – Nichushkin
Colton – Kadri – Roy
Kelly – Drury – O’Connor

We know from last year that the fourth line can be special when paired together. They were destructive in the series against Dallas and the Avs have been itching to put them all back together again this season.

A few staples for me: I want MacKinnon and Necas together as often as possible and I want Nelson and Nichushkin to be stapled together. Those duos have been spectacular together at times this year, MacKinnon/Necas in the offensive end and Nelson/Nichushkin defensively.

With Kadri more of an offensive center at this point, the Avs have a perfect blend of offense and defense. MacKinnon and Kadri’s lines are going to drive a ton of play and Nelson and Drury’s lines exist as your defensive shutdown lines.

When talking about Colorado’s need to get heavier, the additions of Kadri and Roy certainly add that element. Kadri has always been a guy who plays with a ton of sandpaper, but he’s learned to control it better over the years. He’s eighth in the NHL in penalties drawn, but he’s only been called for 11 this season. That’s a huge step up from the penalty-prone guy he has been much of his career. That increased discipline makes him one of the most valuable players in the league in terms of putting his team on a power play.

Back to lines, one other consideration I would have for a line that goes against my staples from above is a third line of Nichushkin-Kadri-Roy with Colton moving up to the second line. If Colorado wanted to go with a heavy third line that will absolutely suck to play against, that’s on the table, too. A heavy second line could be Kadri-Nelson-Nichushkin with a third line of Colton-Roy-Lehkonen, too.

That lineup versatility is a huge component for why this trade makes the Avalanche the runaway favorite to represent the Western Conference in the Stanley Cup Final. The Avs have added size, snarl, and skill to their lineup. It was very expensive, but the goal is to win the Stanley Cup and it would be virtually impossible to feel like the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild, Colorado’s two closest competitors in the West, are better prepared to take on the Avs after the Kadri addition.

If Kadri can slide onto Colorado’s terrible power play and infuse it with some life, the rest of the league is in very big trouble.

Kadri’s arrival in Denver makes this a forward group that can go toe-to-toe with the ’22 Cup champs on paper. This team was already great, but the Kadri addition gives them a chance to be truly special.