What's next for the Avalanche in the offseason

Colorado’s season ended in brutal fashion with a 3-2 Game 7 loss to the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday night, kicking off the team’s offseason. Given the on-ice success they just experienced, it’s fair to say the Avalanche have a big summer ahead of them as they look to add to their organization in hopes of taking steps forward.

This is shaping up to be one of the most important summers in Avalanche history as what they do will have a large say in how soon (or even if) the Avalanche win their next Stanley Cup.

It’s a robust to-do list but let’s take a look at what they have on the docket for this summer.

1. Re-sign Mikko Rantanen

This one is obvious and also might be the one that takes the longest to get done. Avalanche fans should prepare themselves for a lengthy negotiation, one that might even stretch into September as training camp nears. The RFA market this summer is absolutely loaded with talent (Mitch Marner, Matthew Tkachuk, Patrik Laine, Brayden Point, Sebastian Aho, etc.) and it’s going to take a while for all of those teams to sort out the markets for these guys. It’s the kind of summer that resets the market for young stars coming off their ELC.

Rantanen won’t come cheap as his first three seasons saw him score at least 20 goals in each year and the last two years he scored 171 points in 155 games. He followed up his 87-point regular season by leading the playoffs with 14 points before the Avs were eliminated.  Regardless of how much of his production you believe is tied to him playing alongside Nathan MacKinnon, those are superstar numbers.

The real rub is what the young wingers are going to make. The center market has just found its way north of $10 million in the last few years with Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews breaking the bank on their post-ELC deals. Rantanen isn’t a center, however, and there’s a fair question as to how much of his production is the result of playing next to MacKinnon just as he turned into a superstar. It’s obviously a great problem to have but trying to parse production for purposes of pay is a tricky proposition.

Mark Stone was set to be one of the premier free agents this summer and he signed an extension with Vegas at $9.5 million per year. While Rantanen has been more productive than Stone, Stone is also an elite defensive winger on top of a point-per-game player. Teams also pay more for UFAs than RFAs, making this quite an interesting contract negotiation.

Colorado has historically been slower to sign their RFAs when arbitration is not involved (remember Nikita Zadorov two years ago?) but Joe Sakic had no issues signing Matt Duchene, Gabe Landeskog, or MacKinnon when their deals were up (in Landeskog’s case, a year early, in fact). It all sets up for an interesting summer. Sakic has previously told BSN Denver Rantanen will be in Colorado for a long time. It’s on him to make that become a truth this summer.

2. Clean up their cap sheet

Rantanen is certainly the highest profile player for Colorado who doesn’t have a contract beyond this season but he most definitely isn’t alone. The Avs finished the season with 49 of 50 contract slots filled and 26 of them are free agents this summer. Of those 26, 15 are RFAs and 10 of those are arbitration-eligible. Philipp Grubauer is the only goaltender signed for next year.

Colorado hasn’t been shy about going to arbitration in the past as it ensures a player is signed by early August at the latest. They haven’t actually gone through a hearing since Tyson Barrie three summers ago and even then they settled before a ruling was announced. Point being arbitration is not quite the evil it used to be so if Colorado files for arbitration with several of those 10 players, it’s just the process playing out.

Zadorov, Alexander Kerfoot, and J.T. Compher are all guys who could find themselves involved in arbitration this summer. Colorado has a lot of work to do with half of their organization up for new contracts.

3. Sort out the goaltending

As mentioned above, Grubauer is the only goaltender currently under contract at any level of the organization. Semyon Varlamov is a UFA and it sure looks like he lost his job at the end of the season. We know he isn’t really looking for a backup job so it’s fair to think he tests the market this summer in search of a team willing to give him a look as a starter.

The organization could essentially start over at the position if it wanted to but I’ll toss a suggestion their way just in case they’re reading:

• Re-sign Pavel Francouz and give him the backup job. It’s a risk with the limited NHL action he saw this year but he was a major factor in the Colorado Eagles making the AHL postseason. The Avs brought him over for depth and he certainly did his part in earning a look at the next level. Give it to him.
• Let Spencer Martin walk. It simply hasn’t worked out but you have to respect the strong second half he had.
• Sign Adam Werner to an ELC and let him be the backup for the Eagles. Werner has improved every year since being drafted and he took the leap to the SHL this year and played very well. Time to give him a chance.
• The relationship with Joe Cannata has worked out just fine for both sides. Bring him back to be the Eagles third goalie and the starter for the Utah Grizzlies. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, you know?
• Sign an AHL veteran with some NHL experience to be the starter for the Eagles and the third guy on the Avs’ depth chart.

4. Make a decision on Tyson Barrie

The team has been able to kick the Tyson Barrie can down the road as heir apparent Cale Makar gestated at UMass. Well, Makar showed up and scored six points in 10 playoff games. It’s obviously a small sample size but that’s a 49-point pace across an entire season. Barrie’s primary value is in his point production.

Does Makar’s success mean there’s no room for Barrie? Of course not. But there are financial realities at play here. Barrie is one season away from unrestricted free agency. He’s coming off a career year in which he produced 59 points, the most since Ray Bourque also produced 59. Ray Bourque! The point is, Barrie is very good at what he does well.

Since 2013-14, Barrie is eighth in defenseman scoring (tied with P.K. Subban). He’ll be 29-years-old next summer. If Colorado wants to re-sign him, the most comparable contract would be Keith Yandle’s deal with Florida in 2016. That deal was a seven-year, $44.45 million deal with an AAV of $6.35 million. Barrie currently makes $5.5 million and it’s been three years since the Yandle deal was signed so there’s a fair expectation that Barrie will seek in the neighborhood of an $8 million AAV.

If that’s the route Colorado wants to go, there will be repercussions come expansion draft time but with their decision to play Makar this postseason, that was already guaranteed. If Colorado decides to roll the dice and balance the cap sheet and trade Barrie, they would have to decide on a futures-heavy deal or target a top-six forward in a straight swap. Either decision has its pros and cons and we’ll breakdown the Barrie situation in-depth more as the summer goes on. But it’s definitely come time for the team to make a decision. Losing him in free agency for free next summer would be a painful step backward as they look to go into a more competitive era.

5. Tread carefully in free agency

Colorado is set to have just shy of $36 million to spend in free agency. Obviously, keeping the RFAs mentioned above will chew into a healthy portion of that. They’ll still have enough to chase after the big fish that will likely be making it to market this year.

Artemi Panarin, Erik Karlsson, Jeff Skinner, and Sergei Bobrovsky are just some of the names who might make it to market. There’s always a temptation to spend when you have money and obvious needs and the market could be flush with top-six forwards, by far Colorado’s biggest area of need right now. How the team feels about Tyson Jost’s development and what they decide to do with the fourth overall pick and the expected timeline of that player’s impact will both play a role in how aggressive Colorado gets in free agency.

The UFA market always thins out in the weeks leading up to July 1 so what appears to be a robust class could be significantly weakened by the time the tampering period gets underway. If that happens, the Avalanche need to avoid the major landmines that have saddled some teams with awful long-term situations because they got blinded by recent success and had salary cap space to play with.

Milan Lucic and James Neal, just to name two, serve as cautionary tales for teams who get reckless with money. Colorado should be aggressive in chasing obvious upgrades but if they miss out on the obvious fits, they should be careful about spending money simply for the sake of spending it.