The Colorado Avalanche have to make some tough decisions as they are about to enter free agency season. They have just $8.7 million in cap space to work with. They will have to bite the bullet and let a couple of bigger free agents walk to another team. Brock Nelson comes to mind, and he’s been linked to some teams already.
I’d love to see the team re-sign Jonathan Drouin to another short-term, low-price deal like he signed last offseason—a one-year, $2.5 million deal. As I wrote recently, I think it would be smart of him to do so, so that he can try and improve on a year that saw him play just 43 games. He has a legitimate chance of cashing in if he plays most of a season and is very productive.
Another player the Avalanche need to make a decision on is Joel Kiviranta. Kiviranta is 29 years old and finished his second season with the Avs. He played in 79 of 82 regular season games and put up career-best numbers in most of the major categories: Games played, goals (16), assists (7), plus-minus (+15), and average time on ice (12:31). He also put up 84 shots, one shot shy of tying his career-best, but had a shooting percentage of 19.0. His shooting percentage was his second-best, but the major difference is that he had 53 more shots than his career-best’s shooting percentage year (84 to 31).
Last season was his fourth season of averaging double-digit minutes per game. He’s a prime example of someone who just needs to get more and more opportunities and he can show what he’s capable of. Kiviranta has fit in very well in the positions he’s been put in by the Avalanche and head coach Jared Bednar.
Kiviranta has proven that he is capable of putting up solid numbers. The big thing for me is that he was healthy and in the lineup consistently. As a third-liner, his production was key for the Avalanche in 2024-25. One of the things that the team lacked most of the time is depth scoring. Though he only scored in 12 games, he had a four-game goal streak in early-March.
He will be cheap to re-sign for the Avalanche and if he continues to impress going forward, he could earn a long-term contract worth more than he’s been getting since entering the league in 2019-20 with the Stars. He’ll be a low-risk high-reward player for the Avs in 2025-26 if they choose to re-sign him, which I think they will, and they absolutely should.