Thousand-foot view drives Sakic to another safe trade deadline

The trade deadline always presents an odd exercise in building a team that’s trying to win a championship. It’s almost never core pieces that get moved but complementary ones, players on the periphery.

After all, it’s largely the good teams in the league trying to pillage the bad teams for the players that can help them the most. That alone makes it difficult to do business because half of the teams in the league won’t deal with each other as they try to one-up the competition in the race for the Stanley Cup.

Standing solidly in a playoff position and within striking distance of a division title, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic decided to play the long game once again at the deadline.

Following the same type of path he walked last year, Sakic nibbled around the edges of his roster this year in making just two transactions.

The main piece that will help is Vladislav Namestnikov from the Ottawa Senators, who at 27-years-old is a pending unrestricted free agent and bottom-six forward known for his strong defensive play.

Namestnikov is a couple years removed from the most productive seasons of his career in Tampa Bay and has moved from center to wing since leaving the Lightning. His current claim to fame is leading the NHL in short-handed goals with four.

With Colorado having a real problem with a penalty kill currently ranked 18th (after a good week, mind you), the first area you can expect Namestnikov to come in and contribute is on that unit.

As Matt Calvert continues to nurse an injury, Colorado’s PK can use the help but when Calvert returns is when this move should really begin to pay dividends. A healthy Calvert combined with Namestnikov, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Matt Nieto, Val Nichushkin, and J.T. Compher should give the PK all the quality defensive forwards they can handle.

Namestnikov’s 25 points (13g, 12a) in 54 games played gives the Avalanche another productive, albeit not high-end, forward who can consistently help them with a bottom six that began the year on fire but has slowed greatly in terms of overall production.

It won’t be difficult to find a spot for Namestnikov in the lineup as he can just replace Sheldon Dries from the last game Colorado played. When the Avs get healthy, however, it gets a lot more complicated.

The 2021 fourth-round pick paid to Ottawa for Namestnikov’s services may not be an expensive price, but it likely buys him a spot in the lineup for the rest of the season as long as he is healthy.

The real question is what becomes of guys like Nieto, Tyson Jost, Vladislav Kamenev, and Martin Kaut.

Nieto is a battle-tested veteran who was party to San Jose’s run to the Stanley Cup Finals a couple of years ago and has been part of the turnaround in team chemistry in recent years.

Nieto’s production (1g, 1a since January began), however, might leave him vulnerable to at least being part of a lineup rotation with Jost and Kamenev. Kamenev’s case has been hurt by a very poor showing last week.

Where things get interesting is the cases with Jost and Kaut.

Jost’s struggles are well-known and Colorado’s inability (or unwillingness) to move on from Jost at the deadline today means he still has a chance to fight for a job. What’s next for him is unclear as he certainly seems the prime target for removal from a fully-healthy Avalanche lineup.

Kaut is a more interesting case. He’s played just three games and has a contract situation that might convince the team to send him back to the AHL for a playoff run with the Eagles.

Kaut’s play in those three games, however, certainly makes you take notice. He made the play to set up the only goal in Colorado’s 1-0 win over Anaheim last Friday night and he had strong moments in each of his other two appearances.

He quickly earned the trust of the coaching staff, as well, as he was on the ice in the final minutes of regulation when Colorado was tied 1-1 with Los Angeles. Coaches regularly give away who they trust in big spots when it matters most and that Jared Bednar took the chance with Kaut in that situation spoke volumes about his maturity and advanced defensive profile already.

Where things get tricky with Kaut is the contract situation. With three games played, he has six more until the Avalanche has to make a decision on whether to keep him this year or send him back to the AHL.

If Colorado keeps him, Kaut’s ELC kicks in this year. If Colorado sends him down, the ELC slides to next year, giving Kaut the rare five-year ELC (it already slid once last season). Because Kaut isn’t likely to be an offensive dynamo who demands a major extension on his second contract, this is a relatively minor point but one that could be a deciding factor if all other things are equal.

The timing of the decision will also matter here. Assuming Kaut continues to play every night, his tenth game would come March 8 against the San Jose Sharks. That’s also the fourth week from Nazem Kadri’s injury against Minnesota. His timeline, remember, was 4-6 weeks, so if Kadri is ready to play or close to it, they could choose to play the financial card and send Kaut back down to slide the ELC another year.

If Kadri isn’t healthy and Kaut continues playing well, it should be an easy decision to just start the ELC and not worry about it.

Of course, that still leaves a question mark about where the lineup goes once completely healthy. Because Colorado didn’t move anybody out of an already-crowded forward group and just added to it, the Avs are going to face some decisions.

There’s no doubt Namestnikov makes Colorado better today. At the extremely reasonable price of a fourth-round pick, it shouldn’t be a deal that bothers many too much. It was a safe play but one that could help one of the few roster vulnerabilities left for the Avs.

The other move on the day should be even less of an impact overall. Sending Calle Rosen back to Toronto, Colorado landed goaltender Michael Hutchinson to be Pavel Francouz’s backup until Philipp Grubauer returns from injury.

There remains no clear timeline on the Grubauer injury so the Avs chose to play it safe again today in picking up Hutchinson. The cost was Rosen, acquired over the summer in the Kadri deal, who apparently wasn’t in Colorado’s future plans on a defense that is set to get even more crowded with youth in the next year.

Hutchinson’s numbers this year are nothing short of terrible behind a porous Toronto defense that bleeds quality chances. It’s an ugly .886 save percentage and 3.66 goals-against-average that makes this even remotely a controversial move.

Hutchinson won’t confuse anyone with a starting-caliber netminder in the NHL and he’s proven that in 126 appearances but Colorado’s need for him should be temporary. Francouz has proven capable in spot-start duty and should be able to man the Colorado net but the Avs have two sets of back-to-backs coming up where Hutchinson can be expected to step in and give Francouz a breather.

Beyond those two likely starts, Hutchinson should not be a candidate to start many games for the Avs. If he is, something bad has happened with Francouz and it likely wouldn’t matter if it was Hutchinson or the recently-demoted Hunter Miska who was in net.

The uncertainty of Miska, however, was a driving force in the decision to acquire Hutchinson at all. It may not be a great career but Hutchinson’s experience means it’s easier for a front office and coaching staff to hope for a positive experience in very limited starts versus a complete unknown.

We’ll see how that decision ultimately plays out for Colorado but the reality is that both moves should be, relatively speaking, low-impact overall.

Sakic has all the assets he could ever need to go and make whatever splashy move he’d like to make but he has to weigh being in a unique position among contenders. Most teams contending for the Cup are older (Dallas, Boston, Washington, Pittsburgh) or in clear win-now windows (St. Louis, Tampa Bay).

Where Colorado stands apart is their combination of salary cap space, current contending status despite its youth, and high-end farm system that is likely to produce a handful of quality NHL players over the next two years.

That left Sakic in an unusual place at the deadline. The waters are muddier for the Avalanche. The fear of screwing up an extremely bright future with a knee-jerk reaction to several injuries won out over the desire to overpay in a trade market flush with mediocre players.

The safe play was to see what this group can do in the postseason and go into the summer and adjust from there.

And who knows? Maybe they go into that summer break as the team that won the Cup anyway.

Win it or not, today’s deadline shows Sakic’s eyes are still on the possibility of multiple prizes, not just the one being awarded this year.