Avalanche loses Joonas Donskoi in expansion draft

The Colorado Avalanche escaped the Vegas expansion draft relatively unscathed, losing goaltender Calvin Pickard to the Golden Knights and improving at the position in the years after.

That was not the case with this year’s round of expansion as the Seattle Kraken were set to take one of the $3M players on Colorado’s roster. Between Ryan Graves, J.T. Compher, and Joonas Donskoi, those three represented the best combination of value between age, playing ability, and contract length and cost.

Understanding that Graves was the most valuable of those three, the Avs moved him in a deal with New Jersey last week that gave them a second-round pick in this weekend’s NHL Draft as well as a potential fourth-line replacement in Mikhail Maltsev.

That decision led the Avs to protecting seven forwards, three defensemen, and one goaltender.

While there was some talk the Kraken would engage in contract negotiations with pending free agent Gabe Landeskog, no deal was reached and the Kraken moved on to other options.

That led them to Donskoi, the 29-year-old Finnish forward who signed with the Avalanche in free agency two summers ago after starting his NHL career with the San Jose Sharks.

Signed to a four-year deal worth $3.9 million per season, Donskoi held up his end of the deal as he was Colorado’s eighth-highest scorer in each of his two years with the organization.

Known for being extremely streaky, especially in scoring goals, Donskoi had the two highest goal-scoring years of his career in an Avs sweater in putting up 16 and 17 goals, respectively. He had never before scored more than 14 in a season and did so twice in less than 70 games played.

One of just three right-handed shooters among Colorado’s regular forwards corps the last two years (Compher and Nathan MacKinnon are the others), Donskoi was able to parlay that into a plum position on the top power-play unit at times.

His knack for being on the ice when the puck goes in the net for the Avs helped him see ice time on all three of Colorado’s top lines, though he was arguably at his best on the third line when he got to feast on the weaker competition.

The loss of Donskoi adds another name to a forward corps that could be seeing significant turnover when free agency opens on July 28. Brandon Saad, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Matt Calvert, and, of course, Landeskog could all exit the organization (Bellemare is confirmed gone already) when the market opens next week.

Having the $3.9M taken off Colorado’s books puts them right around the $30M mark in salary cap space available right now though, with all three of Landeskog, Philipp Grubauer (UFA) and Cale Makar (RFA) still unsigned, that cap space might be a touch deceiving.