Erik Brannstrom hopes to be the next reclamation success for the Colorado Avalanche

We knew coming into free agency that the Colorado Avalanche were going to have to work the secondary market for good value and reclamation projects. They’ve shown an ability to mine this market well, both in free agency and via trade.

Former Avs such as Valeri Nichushkin, Andre Burakovsky, Matt Nieto, Ryan Graves, Patrik Nemeth, Evan Rodrigues and the recently re-signed Jonathan Drouin all experienced career revivals of sorts in Colorado that led to them getting financial security and stability they lacked before their Avalanche tenures.

Finding the value in that market is extremely important for a cap-strapped team like the Avalanche, so their signing today of former Ottawa Senators defenseman Erik Brannstrom to a one-year contract worth $900K was an eye-catching move.

Brannstrom was a first-round pick of the Vegas Golden Knights back in 2017 and was eventually traded to Ottawa as part of the Mark Stone deal. Since then, he has been unable to secure a steady spot in the Sens’s defensive lineup, culminating in them not tendering him a qualifying offer on Sunday.

Landing in Colorado represents an enormous opportunity for him to round his game into form and play for a team that takes itself seriously. When we talk about defensemen coming to Colorado and fitting the style, we’re looking at premier skaters who excel at moving pucks from defense to offense.

What does Brannstrom bring to the Colorado Avalanche?

The profile is one of extremes. What he does well, he is excellent at; what he does poorly, he badly struggles at.

Offensively, he’s an excellent playmaker and a high-end transition player who gains the zone at a high rate. He doesn’t do anything on in-zone offense and isn’t a shooting threat.

Defensively, he’s very good at getting to pucks and moving them quickly. He’s also a quality defender at his own blueline. His physical play is virtually non-existent and even though he moves pucks quickly, it is too frequently to the other team.

His size is listed at 5’10”, but I’ve always thought that was generous. Even if that is his true height, it’s still quite small. Sam Girard remains a mainstay on this Avalanche defense, so adding Brannstrom to this group means the concerns about them being too easy to play against will persist.

For a player whose calling card should be offense, he doesn’t score much with a career-high of 20 points last season. It’s only the second time he’s played more than 70 games, so it is fair to think that he still has a lot of growth available to him, especially in a better situation that doesn’t see him occasionally used at forward on a team that was a directionless mess.

Building on the micro stats from above, we see that Brannstrom’s overall impact on the play is very positive.

You can clearly see that Brannstrom’s game is trending in the right direction in a big way. He has gone from being an offense-only player to one whose defensive impact got better and better the more he played.

The Senators kept him in a sheltered role, as evidenced by the quality of competition he saw, but it’s a role similar to the one he should expect to see in Colorado. Seeing those results in that situation is quite encouraging.

As a reminder, positive numbers on offense (top row) and negative numbers on defense (bottom row) are good. The numbers are relative to league average.

Last year, Brannstrom was slightly above-average in his play-driving on offense, but the suppression defensively was outstanding. He isn’t a physical bruiser who is going to grind you down like Josh Manson and Calvin de Haan, but he plays with the puck a lot and better him have it than the opposing team, right?

Another upside in Brannstrom is that he has experience playing both sides of the ice, so even though he’s left-handed, the Avs could play him in either spot depending on the lineup configuration.

At the moment, it seems fair to think that he will be on the right side next to Calvin de Haan on a rebuilt third pairing. Brannstrom will have to figure it out quickly, however, because Sam Malinski will be chomping at the bit to take that job if Brannstrom falters.

The additions of Calle Rosen and Jacob MacDonald also added even more Avalanche-familiar depth to the defense in case of injury.

All in all, this is a great value proposition for Colorado and Brannstrom both. He gets the stability of an organization that knows what it is doing and the Avs get a low-salaried player who is a good bet to outperform his contract.

Brannstrom will turn 25 in September and if things go well, this could be a relationship we see continue beyond just one year.