After seven years as the Assistant General Manager of the Colorado Avalanche, Chris MacFarland was promoted to General Manager, taking over for Joe Sakic in 2022. That year, the Avs won the Stanley Cup. Since then, we’ve seen several notable transitions from the team.
The first duty MacFarland had was signing Nathan MacKinnon to a long-term extension. Check. MacKinnon signed an eight-year, $100.8 million deal that kicked in in 2023-24. That year, MacKinnon won the Hart trophy as the best player in the league. If I had to guess, MacKinnon likely had no intention of leaving the only NHL team he’s ever known. Avs Faithful is extremely grateful for that, and for MacFarland for making sure that deal got done.
The same cannot be said for the biggest change on the team since that extension got signed. Of course, I’m talking about the blockbuster trade that went down this past weekend between the Avs, Hurricanes, and Blackhawks.
There’s been quite a lot of “he said, they said” from several different sources including Rantanen himself, to which he put it out there in the universe that he was blindsided by the trade, while other sources say that the two sides had proper communication and extension talks. At the end of the day, none of that matters now. The blame game doesn’t change much. It sure doesn’t change the fact that Rantanen is no longer in Colorado.
Rantanen played 619 games for the Avalanche and scored 287 goals and assisted on 394 scores. He also had 100 power play goals and 147 power play assists.
Being teammates with Rantanen for such a long time, you can imagine that guys such as MacKinnon and Arturri Lehkonen likely were not pleased by the trade, though everybody is aware that it’s a business and essentially there is not very much loyalty from a team’s point of view. Unfortunately, the salary cap is the salary cap. Despite rumours that it will be increased in years to come, MacFarland must not have had confidence that a deal with Rantanen would get done with both sides being happy.
It will be interesting to see what Rantanen’s game is like in a couple of years. The same goes for the players Colorado acquired in the trade—Martin Necas and Jack Drury.
With that being said, I’d like to hear what everyone has to say regarding MacFarland’s legacy.