The Colorado Avalanche are in a little bit of a pickle when it comes to their contract situations. They traded away Mikko Rantanen during the season, but still are projected to have just $8.70 million to work with for the 2025-26 NHL season. When it comes to the NHL, cost-friendly contracts aren’t that uncommon. However, there are other things to take into consideration.
The team has to decide on which of their free agents they want to re-sign. Among those players are Jonathan Drouin, Brock Nelson, Jimmy Vese, Joel Kiviranta, Erik Johnson, and Ryan Lindgren. With the team’s upcoming cap situation, Nelson might be out of the question in terms of re-signing. The Avalanche might re-sign Lindgren and Johnson, but the one player I am certain they would like to bring back is Kiviranta, who really stepped up in a huge jump in playing time than he is used to.
The Avalanche currently have Cale Makar under contract for the next two seasons. His AAV is $9 million. It’s hard to believe the idea that he could move on from the team after his contract is up, but you never know. I could see the team extending him and wouldn’t be too surprised if he had just a small bump in his AAV, still considering it “team friendly.”
I’m not opposed to the Avalanche adding potential superstar talent. If you’re in a Stanley Cup window, which the Avalanche are, you have to fill holes that are left from departures. That’s the issue right now for Colorado. They have too many holes and not enough money.
As I mentioned, the Avs have just $8.70 million to work with in the upcoming season, with seven players set to hit unrestricted free agency. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to add a big contract this year, unless they move on from a high-priced player. Currently, the team’s highest-paid players are Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Devon Toews, and Gabriel Landeskog. While MacKinnon is the only one making eight figures, and despite the NHL salary cap’s expected rise, the Avs don’t have the advantage of money.
Here’s why the Colorado Avalanche should stay away from Mitch Marner
It’s that time of year where players get linked to certain teams. Despite Colorado’s salary cap situation, Mitch Marner of the Maple Leafs is one of those players.
There is plenty of appeal to adding a talent such as Marner. He’s only 28 years old, and can add around 30 goals for your team, as he did with the Maple Leafs over the past nine seasons. Well, he did only pass 30 goals twice in that time, but as I said, around 30.
Marner was under contract with the Maple Leafs and made $10,903,000 steadily since the 2020-21 season. Surely he would want to maintain that high AAV in his next contract. That’s just not on the table for the Avalanche, at least right now. If, say, Marner for some reason decided to sign with a new team on a short, team-friendly deal and then hit free agency again, maybe the Avalanche would entertain it.
Marner has also never won a Stanley Cup, nor anything like the Hart Memorial trophy in his career. He was nominated for the King Clancy trophy by his team this year, but that has nothing to do with on-ice performance. If he was a big contributor on a Stanley Cup-winning team, I would be more willing to say the Avalanche should give him a shot, but that just is not the case.
Another thing that concerns me about Marner is his playoff performances, or lack thereof. In 70 career playoff games, he has just 13 goals. Though he has 50 assists, a player who commands as much money as he does needs to produce scores for his team. That just isn’t Marner on a consistent playoff basis.
Ideally, Colorado would find some diamonds in the rough who don’t command a lot of money. While it’s no guarantee that they could make a run with that mentality, I like that idea a lot better than them paying high amounts of money for multiple players. It hasn’t worked out for the Leafs. It likely would not work for Colorado.