The Colorado Avalanche should not touch a proposed trade involving Brock Nelson for Casey Mittelstadt.
A recent piece in The Athletic looked at good fits for contending teams looking to bolster their rosters at the trade deadline. One deal suggested in that piece was a trade between the Colorado Avalanche and the New York Islanders.
Said trade involved sending center Brock Nelson from Long Island to Colorado for Casey Mittelstadt and a second-round pick.
All right, I don’t know where to begin with the problems with this trade. So, I’ll just go down the list of issues one by one. Hopefully, doing so will flesh out why the Colorado Avalanche should not touch this proposed trade with a ten-foot pole.
Why Colorado Avalanche should not trade Brock Nelson for Casey Mittelstadt
Contract status
Contract status seems like a good place to start. Nelson is in the final year of his current deal which carries a $6 million cap hit. That’s a fine cap hit, but it also means that Nelson will need a new contract at the end of the season. As such, do the Avalanche re-sign him? If they can’t, they lose Nelson, Mittelstadt, and the second-round pick.
Mittelstadt is under contract
Mittelstadt is under contract until 2027 with a very manageable cap hit of $5.75 million. That situation would offer the Islanders plenty of cost certainty, especially when the Isles need to figure out what to do with defensemen Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov.