The Avalanche entered the summer with a large number of unsigned young players who they were going to have to find a way to sign while still navigating the free-agent field. After signing Vlad Kamenev yesterday, Colorado was down to two unsigned RFAs and decided to get a headstart on next season.

That headstart comes in the form of a seven-year extension for Sam Girard, the precocious 21-year-old defenseman who has spent the last two seasons spinning his way into the hearts of Avalanche fans. The deal is for $35 million, meaning the AAV is $5 million per season.

The extension comes with Girard set to enter the final year of his entry-level contract and now ties Girard to the Avalanche until he is 29-years-old.

Girard was a main piece of the Matt Duchene trade back in 2018 as the team was determined to get a top young defensive prospect in exchange for Duchene. Today’s extension is validation that goal was accomplished, even when acknowledging they also eventually landed Bowen Byram in the same deal.

This deal for Girard has the potential to be, simply put, fantastic. Girard’s first two seasons have been a little underwhelming in terms of point production (47 points in 150 games), especially with his reputation as a high-scoring player in juniors, but the quality of his defense has always been a surprise given his small stature.

In fact, the generously-listed 5’10”, 162-pound defenseman has defied all expectations and become one of the league’s premier players at exiting the defensive zone with the puck.

As teams have invested more in analytics, the desire big defensemen with limited puck skills has started to wane. Enter Girard, who ten years ago would have struggled a lot more to break into the league but is a perfect fit for how teams want to play today.

He’s particularly an excellent fit for the up-tempo style Colorado is looking to play as they seek to use their skating ability to get on top of teams and wear them down. We saw this play out to great effectiveness at times during the postseason last year. When the Avalanche won the style battle, they almost always won the game.

Despite Girard’s career-high of 27 points (4g, 23a) last year, his ability to skate pucks out of the zone and create offensive possessions is a major reason to believe there’s more offensive output coming.

With Tyson Barrie now in Toronto, there’s also the opportunity that Girard gets the first crack at the PP1 spot Barrie vacated. With Makar also on the team, it’ll be a fight for that job but even if Girard loses it, he’s shown he can effectively quarterback the second power play.

With a deeper forward corps this year, Colorado’s second unit should have a chance to be much more consistently effective than last year’s very hit-or-miss group.

With Ian Cole out until at least December, Girard is expected to be Colorado’s top left-handed defenseman next to either Erik Johnson or Makar. He should get a healthy minutes bump with Barrie out of town and Cole out of commission.

If the Avs end up going with Girard and Makar, well, good luck to the other 30 teams who have to deal with that because that combination has already proven to be a handful and they’re only just getting started.

The Girard extension is now Colorado’s longest current contract on the books and just the third seven-year contract given out since Joe Sakic became General Manager (Nathan MacKinnon and Erik Johnson the other two, although Gabe Landeskog signed one when Sakic was still Executive Vice President).

Per usual, below are some of Girard’s fancy stats: