As of right now, the move by the Colorado Avalanche, or lack thereof, to not acquire Elias Lindholm in a trade with the Calgary Flames looks like the smart move. Here’s how the trade between the Flames and Vancouver Canucks went down:
Calgary received forward Andrei Kuzmenko, prospects Hunter Brzustewicz and Joni Jurmo, and a first-round and conditional fourth-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft. Vancouver acquired Lindholm.
By not going after Lindholm (despite rumors swirling around for quite some time), the Colorado Avalanche appear to be all-in on their current crop of players and prospects. They signed Zach Parise as a free agent to a contract that runs just through the end of the current season. They didn’t have to give up anything in terms of capital to sign him.
The addition of Lindholm also would have come with the guarantee that the Colorado Avalanche would have to renegotiate his contract to make his stay worthwhile. You would not trade a bunch of ammo for a player to only stick around for one year—especially a guy as highly coveted as Lindholm. That wouldn’t have made sense. That would have been terrible management.
The Colorado Avalanche don’t have any cap space and would have had to ship off somebody to make the cap space situation work if they were to acquire Lindholm. Of course, there had been some names floating around. Now, I don’t know if the addition of Parise completely put the Lindholm rumors to bed but it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case in the end.
That being said, in a perfect world, the Avalanche would have been able to pull off a trade for Lindholm, who is just 29 years old, compared to Parise, who is 39. It would have been pretty cool to see it happen, but I’m not too upset about the lack of a trade. I guess we will find out if this pays off for both sides. I’m hoping that Parise will be able to have a pretty decent impact with the Colorado Avalanche, but expectations should be low.