Former Lightning linked to Colorado Avalanche, could be an inexpensive signing

The Colorado Avalanche have most of their roster in place—well, their star pieces. They’ll still have to work out an extension for Mikko Rantanen at some point. That being said, the team still has a few open roster spots that they’ll be looking to fill sometime in the very near future.

A player who has been linked to them is Tyler Johnson, formerly of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Chicago Blackhawks. To me, this sounds like a pretty good idea and something that Chris MacFarland would be able to make happen.

I’m not sure what Johnson’s market is or will be at this point but given that he hasn’t signed yet, I think that he’d be willing to sign for cheap, and that’s the sort of thing that the Colorado Avalanche can afford right now, given their situations with Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin.

If either of those two players come back in 2024-25, the team is going to have to trade somebody or perhaps send them to LTIR to get that player’s cap hit off this year’s books.

Johnson has been decent over the last few years, playing in 123 games and recording 29 goals and 34 assists over the last two seasons. His best year was 2014-15, when he recorded 29 goals and 43 assists in 77 games. I would like to think that his drop off has been because he isn’t playing on a winning team right now.

I think that the Colorado Avalanche could possibly change that. They won’t be asking him to play a huge role—that’s for the likes of Nathan MacKinnon, Casey Mittelstadt, etc. They can place him on the fourth line center position and see if he fits well there. Ideally, he would sign for very cheap and possibly for a one-year prove it deal.