By: Chris Nosek
All season, the Avalanche have been the best team in the league by a mile. For the deadline, Chris MacFarland was able to bring in several players who can help elevate the team and provide quality depth for the lineup. MacFarland brought in Nicolas Roy, Nick Blankenburg, Brett Kulak, and Nazem Kadri, with Calgary retaining 20% of his cap hit. He pulled Samuel Girard and Victor Olofsson off the NHL roster, and the rest were “future assets.” He shipped out a total of seven draft picks and one prospect.
Swapping out Olofsson, who wasn’t adding much lower in the lineup, for Nicolas Roy, who will help improve their penalty kill, was critical. The acquisition of Kulak was important because his cap hit was $2.25 million lower than Girard’s. Yes, it was a slight overpay to get Nicolas Roy out of Toronto, and you would have liked to see Toronto retain a little bit. However, getting the deal completed was critical because, at that point, Roy was slated to be the third-line center, as the Kadri deal seemed dead in the water.
MacFarland lucked out as he was able to circle back to Calgary and complete the deal to re-acquire Kadri. This ended up being a more complex and more expensive deal for MacFarland because Calgary needed to retain 20% of Kadri’s contract to keep Colorado cap-compliant. In the end, it cost MacFarland one prospect who will be starting his first season in the NCAA at UMass next season. Whether the Avs win the Cup or not remains to be seen, but it certainly doesn’t fall on Chris MacFarland if they don’t.
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