Avalanche sign Scott Wedgewood to one-year extension

The Colorado Avalanche continued their busy work with their third signing in the last two weeks as goaltender Scott Wedgewood signed a one-year contract extension for next season. Wedgewood gets a hefty raise from his current $1.5M salary to $2.5M, which is “big” money for a backup goaltender.

So far this season, however, Wedgewood has been anything but a backup for the Avalanche. With presumed starting goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood still rehabbing from offseason surgery, Wedgewood has taken the reins on the starting job to start this year and has started 14 of Colorado’s 17 games.

Wedgewood has thrived with the Avs

Through those 14 starts, he has a 10-1-2 record with a .913 save percentage and 2.26 goals against average. When Wedgewood signed in Nashville before the start of last season, he looked like he was on a downturn in his career and his five appearances (four starts) with the Predators were a disaster and he landed in Denver via goaltender swap last November.

Since becoming an Av, Wedgewood has been excellent with a 23-5-3 record in 33 appearances (32 starts). His .915 save percentage as an Av is much higher than the .905 he was averaging before he landed in Denver, signaling that his fit in Colorado has been great.

The great thing about statistics in sports is that they can usually tell the story you want to tell. In Wedgewood’s Avalanche tenure, you can say that he’s been primarily a backup and that he’s gotten a lot of easier opponents, and that was true last year. This year, however, there’s no getting around a simple fact: Wedgewood has been excellent as the Avalanche starter.

Yes, the Avalanche are the NHL’s best team in terms of territorial control, especially at 5v5. They give up among the fewest scoring chances, including high-danger chances, and shots against in the league. Their penalty kill is one of the league’s best so far, too. All of that is to say that Wedgewood’s job hasn’t been incredibly difficult, he’s just done what’s asked of him with the added flair of a big stop here and there.

In only five of Wedgewood’s 14 starts this season has he allowed more than two goals against. The Avs haven’t asked him to be spectacular on most nights (he has faced more than 30 shots just four times) and he has made easy work of a relatively easy job.

He’s a great fit in the locker room and he’s been a great fit behind how the Avalanche play. The 33-year-old netminder could have taken his chances by going into free agency next summer with not much competition at the goalie position, but his age and lack of track record likely meant he was going to struggle for much security in the open market anyway.

From Wedgewood’s perspective, why rock the boat somewhere else? The Avs offered him a solid raise and while only one year of security, if he continues to play well, there’s a chance the Avs just keep him around.

The biggest complicating factor here is that Colorado’s top prospect is arguably goaltender Ilya Nabokov, who is set to come to North America at the end of his current KHL season. Russians don’t like to come across the pond to play in the AHL, but with Nabokov off to a slow start this year and Wedgewood doing the opposite, the Avs decided their current situation is how they want to proceed for another year.

Whatever comes next with Nabokov will be what it’s going to be, but the Avalanche clearly felt that Wedgewood’s fit on the ice and in the locker room (he is a classic backup goaltender personality – quirky, lovable, personable) is good enough to kick the can down the road with figuring that out.

For now, it’s another year of the Lumber Yard in Denver.

What this means for the Avalanche’s salary cap outlook

It’s only a one-year contract, so the Avs have a healthy dose of cost certainty already on what next year’s team is going to look like. After this deal, the Avs are down to $12.75 million in cap space, though that’s a little inflated because the Brent Burns $3M bonus that vested when he played in his 10th game this season will likely be pushed onto next year’s cap.

Accounting for the Burns bonus, that leaves them with $9.75M in space and expiring contracts of Burns, Sam Malinski, Ilya Solovyov, Victor Olofsson, Jack Drury, Joel Kiviranta, and Zakhar Bardakov. Listed out, that feels like a lot but in reality it isn’t that much work to do and it’s fair to expect that both Malinski and Olofsson are not Avs beyond this season (if the Avs find a way to keep one or both, that would be good work but I’m guarding myself against that right now).

The others on that list are tougher to tell. Burns has been exactly what the Avs wanted and has fit in well, especially in the locker room, where his unique personality has brought levity to a group that could be overly serious at times (Wedgewood helps with this, too). Solovyov isn’t even playing regularly now and Kiviranta’s regular spot in the lineup might have been stolen by Gavin Brindley. Bardakov is trying to prove he can hack it, but even if he does stick, his next contract won’t be expensive.

It’s not a ton of space, but the Avs still have flexibility to make moves as they need. Wedgewood’s new deal is quite a bit more expensive than Nabokov’s $975K cap charge for next year, but the difference in confidence between the ability of those two players is much larger. Thus, Wedgewood’s new contract.

Wedgewood in his own words

Hear from Scott Wedgewood himself after his signing was announced: