NHL Rumors: Colorado Avalanche, and the Columbus Blue Jackets

Keys to the offseason for the Colorado Avalanche

Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski: Taking a look at some of the offseason questions the Colorado Avalanche are facing.

Big free agent decisions – Key pending UFAs in Gabriel Landeskog, Philipp Grubauer and Brandon Saad and to a lesser extent Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Carl Soderberg and Patrik Nemeth. Defenseman Cale Makar is pending RFA and Thomas Chabot‘s eight-year, $64 million contract woud be a starting point.

Tough calls for the Seattle Kraken expansion draft – If they go the 7-3-1 route the J.T. Compher or Valeri Nichushkin will be exposed. Can they convince Erik Johnson to waive his no-trade clause? If he does, they can protect Makar, Devon Toews and Samuel Girard which would leave Ryan Graves and Jacob MacDonald exposed. The Avs and Kraken could talk side deals.

Jared Bednar under the microscope – The Avs haven’t had the playoff success to meet their regular season success. He has a year left on his deal.

Blue Jackets have options with three first-round picks and cap space

Jeff Svoboda of BlueJackets.com: The Columbus Blue Jackets will pick at the No. 5 slot in the upcoming 2021 NHL draft. GM Jarmo Kekalainen said they select the best player available and not by need or position, but if there is a tie, they’d lean towards a centerman.

“If it’s a tie, then you probably go for a center, but you don’t want to make that mistake where you think you have that need and you do have that need, and then there’s another player that is much better and has a much better projection for his career in our minds and becomes that, and then 10 years later you’re saying to yourself, ‘Why the heck did you pick a center when there was this winger available who has scored 600 goals since? What were you guys thinking?’

“I think that’s where you get into the danger of trying to think short term when you actually have to think, what are these guys going to be for their career? That’s the tough part of amateur scouting.”

The Blue Jackets have three first-round picks and some salary cap flexibility this offseason.

They could look to moving at least one first-round pick if they can acquire someone that could immediately help them out next season.

“I think that gives us a lot of flexibility,” the general manager said. “We have those assets now that we can think of within our group (about) what is the best way to build from those picks. It could be a trade, it could be a pick, two picks out of three, or if we think that’s the best way to do it and best way to go, we’ll pick all three.

“But most likely we’ll use one of those in a trade and try to get our team stronger for next year.”