Avalanche re-sign Devon Toews for seven years

It was big news this Friday morning as the momentum that had been built up in the Colorado Avalanche’s quest to re-sign Devon Toews turned into a done deal as the defenseman signed a seven-year extension worth $7.25M per year beginning at the start of next season.

The 29-year-old defenseman has blossomed into one of the league’s best at his position since being acquired by the Avalanche three years ago from the New York Islanders. The deal is widely viewed as one of the biggest trade steals of the last decade around the league thanks to Toews finding a home alongside Cale Makar on one of the NHL’s premier top pairings.

Toews was set to be the premier defenseman in free agency this summer and after watching multiple defensemen sign big-money contracts in recent weeks, he could have prioritized maximizing his earnings by going to the open market in the same year the salary cap is expected to take its first substantial jump in four years.

That did not come to pass as Toews chose security over the prospect of uprooting his family and chasing the money and it isn’t hard to see why. He’s firmly entrenched alongside Makar on the top pairing of a Stanley Cup contending team whose contention window is propped open even more with his decision to stay in Denver.

So how good even is Toews? Since landing in Colorado, his game took a huge leap from his Islanders days and despite playing in a league that loves to punish players outside of Edmonton for playing alongside other great players, he has finished 11th, 8th, and 14th in Norris Trophy voting.

In his first year in Colorado, he finished with a career-high 31 points despite the 56-game season and followed it up with 57 and 50-point seasons in the last two years. His 139 points in 200 games are good for 14th among defensemen scoring since being acquired by the Avs.

Combine that with elite defense that is driven by high hockey IQ and an absurd penchant for making great plays with his stick, and you have a player whose game could age very gracefully as it is less reliant on his raw physical attributes.

To really drive home this point that Toews is one of the league’s best defensemen, let’s look at the fancy stats as well because they are, well, pretty thorough and convincing.

Being in the 99% percentile doesn’t leave a lot of room for other players to be better than him.

As far as the economics of this, the $7.25M AAV has him currently set to be the 29th-highest-paid defenseman in the NHL and that number will absolutely get lower as new deals are signed over the next 12 months.

He turns 30 in February and will be signed through age 37 on this deal and that’s really the biggest concern here. The Avs have tied themselves to yet another player deep into their 30s as Toews joins Nathan MacKinnon, Gabe Landeskog, Valeri Nichushkin, Miles Wood, and Josh Manson. Mikko Rantanen’s next contract could add him to that list, too.

That’s a decent number of bets on players aging well (we’re already seeing the struggle with Landeskog and his injury battles) but the reality here is that the Avalanche secured arguably the other half of the NHL’s top defensive pairing until it’s time for Makar’s next deal in four years.

For a team that is right in the heart of competing for Stanley Cups every year, they had to weigh their willingness to battle the inevitability of a salary cap crunch against the prospect of losing Toews to free agency and then having to replace their top-pairing defenseman with the same financial resources they currently have.

They chose to make it work with Toews, a player who has been an impeccable fit in Colorado’s playstyle but also in their locker room as he has taken on increased leadership in each of his years in Colorado. For a team whose culture has been one of its driving forces to recent success, that’s an important consideration as well.

Toews coming off the board means their highest profile pending free agents are Jonathan Drouin and Tomas Tatar, which is a pretty good situation to be in. On the other hand, they are currently committed to about $85 million with a salary cap limit expected to be in the neighborhood of $87 million with only 16 players currently signed.

That means the Avs are facing some tough decisions, although a lot will depend on the health of Landeskog. If he’s healthy, those tough choices could come from Colorado’s defense. If he’s not, his $7M in cap space can be spread on low-money deals at the bottom of the roster, which is where the majority of their roster openings will be next year.

Those are all problems for tomorrow, however, because the Avalanche got an absolute steal of a deal with this new deal for Devon Toews and he gets to continue calling Denver his home. Sometimes, everyone wins.