Ian Cole traded to Minnesota as Avs prioritize money and youth

It’s been a wild 24 hours for Greg Pateryn, who woke up this morning with news from the league that he was being fined $5,000 for a cross-checking incident in last night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks.

Now, Pateryn is riding the Avs team bus solo from Anaheim to Los Angeles as he and Ian Cole are swapping spots after being traded for one another this afternoon. As part of making the financials of the deal work, the Avs are retaining $800K in salary.

To recap:

COL GETS: Greg Pateryn
MIN GETS: Ian Cole ($800K retained by Avs)

With Cole making $4.25M to Pateryn’s $2.25M, this ultimately ends up saving Colorado about $1.2M in salary cap space.

Pateryn, 30, has been a well-liked and valuable depth defenseman for the Wild organization the last several years. While he won’t light up any scoreboards (his career-high in points is 13), he has been a steady third-pairing defender who has reliably killed penalties when called upon.

Where he fits into Colorado, however, is more of the rotational type of role we saw from Mark Barberio and Kevin Connauton last season.

The team clearly is high on Conor Timmins and will be moving highly-touted Bowen Byram into the lineup as early as this week and this deal removes a major obstacle from both players getting legitimate opportunities to cement themselves as NHL regulars.

In the immediate, Pateryn won’t play tonight but Colorado’s previous plan to play seven defensemen remains the same as Erik Johnson makes his debut alongside Dennis Gilbert, who was called up from the taxi squad this afternoon.

With the extra salary cap space gained in the deal, the Avs can comfortably add some depth to their roster without again being forced into a tough situation such as yesterday when Pavel Francouz suffered an injury and the team had to call up Hunter Miska as their third goaltender on the roster.

Where this deal stings for Colorado is that Minnesota gets the clear-cut better player in Cole. While at 31 and entering the final year of his deal means the relationship between Cole and the Avs was nearing its natural conclusion anyway, he was valuable both in the locker room and as a safeguard against the inevitable onslaught of injuries.

Pateryn is a fine rotational player but Cole is coming off one of the best all-around seasons of his career and it is a legitimate downgrade in quality for the Avs. If Cole was not going to be happy being a role player and wanted more of an opportunity, he will certainly get it in Minnesota as the Wild are the odds-on favorites to snag the final playoff spot in the soft West Division.

Because it’s just habit at this point, let’s look at some of the fancy stats for Pateryn and a quick side-by-side comparison of the players in this deal. It would be a good time to grab a Breck brew.