The NHL trade deadline is several days old, and the Colorado Avalanche were pretty active during and even before it, acquiring guys such as Martin Necas, Brock Nelson, Jack Drury, Charlie Coyle, Jack Johnson, among others. While Necas was added in January, the other additions became members of the Avalanche later on. With that, various sources have put out their own grades for either a single team or for the entire NHL.
Take Bleacher Report for example: They went through each team’s trade deadline activities and provided grades for all 32 of them. Now, it would be fun to see grades done in numerical order—32nd overal to 1st overall, but B/R decided to do it alphabetically.
They suggest the Avalanche traded away their best player in Mikko Rantanen, and ended up screwing up because the Carolina Hurricanes traded him back to the Central Division with the Dallas Stars. For one thing, we don’t know how a player will perform until we see him. To suggest that MacFarland completely messed up because Rantanen ended up with the Stars is actually ridiculous. It’s not like the Hurricanes broke terms of the trade with the Avalanche that said, “we’ll trade Rantanen to you as long as you don’t trade him back to our division.”
Rantanen isn’t Wayne Gretzky or Sidney Crosby. I highly doubt that he’s going to put up killer games against his first NHL team. Of course, anything is possible, but the likelihood of that? I guess we’ll see, but I predict that he won’t.
Bleacher Report also suggests that Mackenzie Blackwood’s lack of experience in the postseason is a red flag. I understand that to a point, but to me, it’s an assumption because of the team Blackwood has in front of him. Now, these are just predictions, but I can see Blackwood performing just as well in the postseason as he has in the regular season. You have to remember that Blackwood was on a really terrible San Jose Sharks team. It’s hard to be a goaltender no matter what, but on a weak team around you is a lot tougher.
He has an 18-7 record with Colorado.
Frank Seravalli acknowledged that Ryan Lindgren’s turnovers are an issue. In his last two seasons with the Rangers (112 games played), he had 112 total turnovers. Yeah, that is very, very bad. However, a move to a winning organization such as the Colorado Avalanche could do him wonders in trying to reduce those turnover stats.
If Lindgren begins to struggle with the Avalanche, they certainly could put him on the bottom pairing, which would limit his minutes but also give him a chance to reset for better performances. He does have a cap hit of $4.5 million, so putting him on the third defensive pairing might look silly, but if they do do that, hopefully it wouldn’t be long-term.