Mile High Sticking
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Colorado Avalanche: Tyson Barrie for Travis Hamonic

By Mark T

Mar 3, 2015; Dallas, TX, USA; New York Islanders defenseman Travis Hamonic (3) skates against the Dallas Stars during the game at the American Airlines Center. The Stars defeated the Islanders 3-2 in overtime. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 3, 2015; Dallas, TX, USA; New York Islanders defenseman Travis Hamonic (3) skates against the Dallas Stars during the game at the American Airlines Center. The Stars defeated the Islanders 3-2 in overtime. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports /
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Should the Colorado Avalanche consider trading a premier young offensive defenseman for a premier young defensive one?

As you may or may not know, Travis Hamonic has requested a trade to be closer to his family in Western Canada. He has included the Colorado Avalanche as one of his acceptable destinations.

During my research for my article about trading for the Oilers young forwards, I came across several Oilers blogs in which they wrote about their desire to land Hamonic.

What these bloggers bemoaned is that, despite the Oilers having plenty of trade chips, they lacked the very thing that the Islanders were looking for – a defenseman comparable to Hamonic.

Enter Tyson Barrie.

The more I’ve looked at the Avalanche roster this offseason, the more I’ve become convinced that Barrie is our best trade-able asset. Erik Johnson has the right side on the top pair locked down, so as long as Barrie is on this team, he’ll always be a 2nd pair guy at best.

That may not be an ideal situation for Barrie, and it might not be ideal for the Avs either since they’ll likely end up with a rather large salary commitment to a 2nd pair guy.

The one issue with trading Barrie is it leaves a giant hole on our 2nd pair that would ideally need to be filled by a right-handed shooter. Outside of EJ, we don’t currently have any of those.

This is why trading for Hamonic, a fellow right handed shooter, is so tempting. He would be a fantastic fit in a second pairing role, and we wouldn’t have to worry about a big salary commitment because he is already signed through 2019/20 for an average salary of 4.875 million. That’s amazing value for a defenseman of his calibre.

Related Story: Tyson Barrie’s Fate Uncertain

Before we go further, let’s compare the numbers on those two blueliners. To make the stats easier to understand, I’ve converted them all to a 0-100 scale where the higher number represents a better player. All stats are even strength unless otherwise indicated.
(Source: war-on-ice)

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So looking at these numbers, these are definitely two comparable players. Hamonic has the edge in size and physical play, as well as Corsi, but Barrie outscores him and puts more of his shots on net.

Both players give the puck away too often, but Hamonic makes up for it by taking the puck away more than he coughs it up. Hamonic is also as good on the penalty kill as Barrie is on the powerplay, but Barrie is overall the better special teams player with his average PK effectiveness compared to Hamonic’s abysmal powerplay performance.

The verdict

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If the Islanders are willing to do it, I’d make this trade for sure. The biggest reason is that Hamonic is just as good as Barrie, but has a better contract than we can ever expect Barrie to sign. If we make this deal, it leaves us more than enough room to re-sign our other free agents like Nathan MacKinnon and Shawn Matthias and maybe pick up someone new.

We could comfortably pair Hamonic with one of our young guys like Nikita Zadorov or Chris Bigras without them having to take on too much defensive responsibility. Best of all, we could use him to take some of the pressure off Johnson and Francois Beauchemin and allow them to play a little more offense for a change.

We’d obviously miss Barrie’s offensive production, but I’ve never really been a fan of relying so much on a defenseman for offense, especially when that defenseman isn’t all that great in his own zone. We’d also sorely miss him on the powerplay, but we can hope that EJ, Zadorov, or Eric Gelinas can pick up some of the slack there.

Meanwhile, Hamonic would be a big upgrade on our current core of penalty killers, and I suspect that given the Avalanche’s general style, he’d end up producing more offensively than he did with the Islanders.

More than anything though, Hamonic represents a big improvement in two statistical areas the Avalanche current struggle: Corsi and Takeaways. He wouldn’t solve all of this team’s problems, but I think our team would overall be better with Hamonic on it than with Barrie.

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