The Colorado Avalanche are heading into a week where they play four games. Their next three games are on the road, starting with the Vancouver Canucks on Monday night, and on Friday, they are at home against the Seattle Kraken. They might decide on making a trade before the timeframe where they cannot do so.
What do I mean, exactly? Well, every year, there is a time during the season where teams are not allowed to make any trades, as well as loans to their farm team, as well as not being allowed to make any waiver claims.
This year, the roster freeze will begin on December 19th and end on December 27th. It will be interesting to see what the roster for the Colorado Avalanche looks like as we head towards that date.
Something that could be tricky for the Avalanche is their injury situation. They have called up a fair number of Eagles players due to injuries and/or inactive designations. The Avs are trying to figure out the best line combinations they can go with, and understandably, it is difficult to do this if there are irregular players in the lineup so often. It’s disappointing, but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the Avalanche do make some sort of move before the roster freeze, as they are constantly looking to make the team better under the unfortunate circumstance of their salary cap. The Avalanche did make two key trades recently, acquiring two goaltenders while also trading away the goaltenders who struggled early in the season for them—Alexandar Georgiev (SAN Jose Sharks) and Justus Annunen (Nashville Predators).
Here’s an interesting note according to PensionPlanPuppets.com:
”Say a team has a player on LTIR who is due to return to play when healthy. If that happens during the freeze period, the team is then allowed to make any player transactions necessary to come into compliance with the salary cap. The freeze thaws completely.”
The Avalanche have had a high number of players hit injured reserve this season but they have returned to action. If Gabriel Landeskog was close while the roster freeze was in effect, he would be able to return to the Avs during the freeze.