Colorado Avalanche: What Tom Wilson’s Contract Could Mean to Avs Negotiations

Will Colorado Avalanche upcoming contract negotiations be affected by the very generous deal that Caps tough guy Tom Wilson got?

The  Colorado Avalanche don’t have a Tom Wilson-style player, though I’ve opined that they need one. Nonetheless, like the Washington Capitals this year, the Avs are going to have two important players up for new contracts as restricted free agents next season — Mikko Rantanen and Nikita Zadorov.

As I looked at the contract the Washington winger signed — six years with an average annual value of $5.16 million — I wondered if such a juicy contract might in some way affect negotiations between the Avs and one of their important players.

Tom Wilson Contract

Any hockey fan who knows who Tom Wilson is has an opinion on his contract. Outside of the Washington fandom, the reactions have ranged from disbelief to bona fide outrage. Within the fandom, Caps fans generally like the contract.

Personally, I was a little taken aback. I expected the team to be more willing to throw money at a short contract and the player to be willing to give up some money to get term. I did not expect him to get both.

Larry Fisher of The Hockey Writers offers a pretty good analysis, which basically boils down to Washington paying for potential in a salary cap situation that’s going up and expected to keep climbing.

Analyzing Value

For Fisher, most of his analysis hinges on one thing — Tom Wilson is only 24 years old. For everyone else, most people base their analysis on the fact that Wilson will likely continue to quadruple his penalty minutes over his points production. (Case in point: 187 PIM in 2017-18 vs a career-best 35 points.)

And Tom Wilson detractors will quickly howl that many of those penalty minutes result from dirty plays.

I didn’t like when Wilson concussed Zadorov. That said, every team has line-steppers — including the Avs (ahem, our cap and his self-professed “wild ways”), so I’m not going to dwell on that aspect of the player too much.

A couple of positives about Wilson’s play, and the reason he’s in the top-six — he opens up space for the elite scorers, and he’s renowned for being a leader — perhaps the future captain of the team.

Here’s the thing, then, about Wilson’s contract — it only works with the Caps. With the Caps, Wilson is a top-six player potentially with the captaincy in his future. On other teams, he’s highly unlikely to have that value.

For example, with the Colorado Avalanche, Wilson would be a Blake Comeau player on Blake Comeau’s line (the third) and expected to show leadership because of his lower points production. Maybe it’s the value each team places on physical play or even the general managers themselves — Caps GM Brian MacLellan was a tough guy in his day. Joe Sakic was an elite scorer — and a player no one would call a tough guy.

Anyway, let’s bring it back to the Avs.

Wilson’s Contract and the Colorado Avalanche

I don’t think Tom Wilson’s contract is going to have any bearing on negotiations with Mikko Rantanen. Rantanen is a legitimate top-line winger with the reverse ratio of Wilson — last season, he had 84 points and just 34 penalty minutes. Plus, the young Finn will be coming off his entry-level contract.

I expect the team and the player will want to go the Nathan MacKinnon route, throwing term at him for a little reduction in money. (With MacKinnon, we so got a discount, but it was the player who wanted to eschew a bridge contract.)

Zadorov might be a different matter. He’ll be completing a bridge contract. And he’s already shown that he expects to get paid his worth. (He missed training camp because of a hold-out in contract negotiations.)

You could draw a comparison between Wilson’s and Zadorov’s styles of play in that Nikita has also often been unrestrained in his physicality. And, as a defenseman, a lot of what he’s expected to bring to the ice is intangible.

To be honest, with the Caps so far away, and there being no goalie involved (since our relationship with the Caps is mostly just to trade for one of their goalie prospects periodically), I don’t expect the Tom Wilson contract to have much influence on Nikita Zadorov’s negotiations.

There are a couple other contracts the Colorado Avalanche are bound to be looking at for… guidance. But that’s a story for another post.