Could the Colorado Avalanche re-sign all 2024 trade deadline acquisitions?
The Colorado Avalanche are continuing to fight for a place in the third round of the 2024 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. After their season comes to an end (hopefully not for a while yet), they will have some decision to make in terms of some of their free agents-to-be.
Colorado traded for four players at the trade deadline: Sean Walker, Casey Mittelstadt, Brandon Duhaime and Yakov Trenin. They all have had some sort of impact for the team and even made somewhat of an impact almost immediately in their early days as members of the Avalanche.
Colorado shipped off Bo Byram in the Mittelstadt trade and Byram played pretty well for the Buffalo Sabres, which is awesome to see. It just didn’t quite work out for Byram in Colorado. Sometimes, players just need a change of scenery to resurrect their career.
Which of the trade deadline acquisitions should the Colorado Avalanche re-sign?
Casey Mittelstadt: Mittelstadt is scheduled to become a restricted free agent, which means that another team can extend an offer sheet to him with the Colorado Avalanche having some time to either match the offer or allow him to sign somewhere else. Here is an extended look at what that means overall.
Mittelstadt is averaging a time on ice of 16:18 during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He has three goals and six assists in 10 games, which is pretty awesome. Two of those goals have come in the team’s last two games. He’s definitely made an impact.
While he’s only played in 18 regular season games for the Avalanche, he only had four penalty minutes in those games, which makes him pretty reliable in staying on the ice.
At the end of the day, I don’t think that Mittelstadt will be extremely expensive, so it should be easy to keep him around, but you never know. At 26-years old, he could also grow into something more, which would be significant.
Sean Walker arrived to Colorado in a trade with the Philadelphia Flyers for Ryan Johansen and a first-round pick. Honestly, the addition of the first-round pick is a huge thing for me. I understand that the team included that pick to sweeten the deal for Johansen, but I don’t think you make this trade unless you are fairly confident that you will be able to re-sign your new defenseman. I don’t think it would make sense to let him sign elsewhere.
A player I’m not very familiar with and thus not overly excited about is Yakov Trenin. Trenin is currently dealing with an injury and has been out for a little while. When he’s on the ice, his contributions don’t equate to goals very often. He only had 12 in 76 regular season games. I think that the team is likely to move on from him and allow him to rejuvenate his career somewhere else.
We might have already seen what Trenin has the ability to become…
