The Colorado Avalanche have been one of the most efficient teams in the league regarding salary cap management.
The Avs have managed to keep a competitive team despite the challenges that come with paying high-priced veteran stars. Despite all of that, Colorado will head into the 2026-27 season with dead cap space.
The Avalanche will head into next season with about $2.3 million in unusable cap space. That space, product from bonus overages, is pretty much a reduction in the team’s overall cap space.
This season, the Avalanche are on the hook for bonus payments paid from last year. Essentially, the team will have to fork over the bonuses Brent Burns earned on his contract last season. Last year, Burns signed a one-year deal with a base value of $1 million. That base value counted towards Colorado’s cap last season. However, his bonuses ended up counting on this year’s cap.
According to Burns’ contract last season, he had $4 million in bonuses. The first threshold kicked in at 10 games played. That was $3 million automatically. The second threshold was $1 million if he played in 70 games or more, averaging 23 minutes of ice time.
The situation here is that the bonuses that were paid out counted towards last year’s cap up to the upper threshold. Everything that exceeded last year’s cap counted towards this year’s hit.
As such, the Avalanche are on the hook for the money. It’s essentially dead since it can’t be traded, moved, buried in the AHL, or anything like that.
The good news is that it’s only for one year, assuming that Burns doesn’t rack up any more bonuses this year. It’s worth pointing out that Burns did sign an incentive-laden contract. The bonuses this year include $1.15 million for 10 games played, and additional $250K bonuses for 55, 60, 65, and 70 games played, while averaging 23 minutes per game.
That’s an additional million that Burns could earn this upcoming season. There’s a good chance he’ll hit them, and if the bonuses exceed this year’s cap limit, they’ll carry over into next season.
Looking at Avalanche cap structure at the moment
At the time of this writing, the Colorado Avalanche have the following salary cap structure:
- Forwards - $62,154,000 million
- Defensemen - $31,400,000 million
- Goaltenders - $ $7,750,000 million
- Total - $101,304,00 million.
Theoretically, that would leave the Avalanche with roughly $2.7 million in cap space. But when adding the cap overages, that is, $2,291,841, the total jumps to $103,595,841, leaving the club with about $404K in available cap space.
Of course, that’s a total that could change. The current cap structure includes 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 2 goalies. The club could pare down the lineup to include just 12 forwards and 6 defensemen. However, the new waiver rules prohibit teams from making paper transactions for cap purposes.
Players sent down to the AHL this season must clear waivers, and can’t be recalled for 10 days. That situation will limit the number of times players can switch between the NHL and AHL, even if they are just paper transactions.
Ultimately, the situation outlined herein could lead the Avalanche to make another cap-clearing move. While it doesn’t seem imminent, there might be a move on the horizon, considering that RFA Fabian Lysell needs a new contract. So, we shall see what happens in case any other moves come down the pipeline this summer.
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