Jost, Miska signings leave Avalanche with very little left to do this offseason

The Avalanche announced this morning (or late last night if you were paying attention to social media) the club had come to terms with Tyson Jost and Hunter Miska on new contracts.

Jost’s deal is his qualifying offer, a one-year contract worth $874,125 next year before he becomes a restricted free agent again. Miska’s two-year deal is a two-way contract as he expected to compete with Adam Werner for the starting goaltender job with the Colorado Eagles.

The contracts leave the Avalanche with just two unsigned RFAs, both acquired from the Islanders: Devon Toews and Kyle Burroughs. The two defenders come with very different expectations as Toews is expected to compete for a top-four job and Burroughs brings great character and leadership to help fill the void created when Eagles captain Mark Alt left for Los Angeles.

While Toews got married just days before his trade to Colorado and might still be on his honeymoon, he had also filed for arbitration before the Avs acquired him and he is scheduled for a hearing on October 31.

If the hearing actually takes place, there are some new rules in place this year. One major change is that once a hearing has begun, the two sides will no longer be able to come to terms on a separate contract.

You might remember the last time the Avs actually went through with a hearing was with Tyson Barrie. The hearing took place and before the award was announced, the two sides came to an agreement on a multi-year deal.

That situation is not allowed anymore. Once a hearing has taken place, the two sides are left to wait the award from the arbitrator. Because Toews filed for arbitration, the Avs are allowed to choose the length of the award. They can choose either one or two years but the money will be the same.

I’ve long said arbitration serves mainly as a deadline for teams to get deals worked out. Most of the time hearings don’t even take place. Last year, 38 players files for arbitration, including Colorado’s J.T. Compher and Sheldon Dries. Both Avs players settled before their hearings, as did 34 of the 38 total cases. Just four saw the process through.

Arbitration has long had a stigma about it thanks to Mike Milbury allegedly making Tommy Salo cry in August of 1997. It’s certainly an awkward situation with each side telling a third party why the other is wrong and the player should get the larger or smaller amount of money.

In reality, it would be even weirder for the Avs to go through this situation with Toews. He’s never played for them and doesn’t even know the people in the organization in a professional capacity. What would either side really have to say? It would come down almost entirely to contract comparables and should, at least theoretically, be the least contentious arbitration experience imaginable.

We’ll see if the two sides even take that chance, though, as there are still 12 days to go until the hearing.

Once the Toews situation is handled, it’s just finding a deal for Burroughs and the organization is pretty much finished. They’ll be pressed close to the cap for the first time since the 2016-17 season (yes, the Avs paid $72M for a 48-point team). They’re down to $5.9M in salary cap space right now with just a 12F/5D/2G lineup. Toews will give them their sixth defender but the leftover money from there will determine how much wiggle room they have to add an extra contract (Byram? Kaut? O’Connor? Timmins?) or two.

We don’t know when the next NHL season starts but this Avalanche offseason is already just about finished. Now we wait.