Gear: How the Avalanche could afford to keep Kadri, MacKinnon, et al.
Second part of a two-part series examining the Colorado Avalanche’s roster and salary cap construction.
Having too many good players is the NHL’s ultimate first-world problem. No team will garner much sympathy for having too many players that deserve to be paid handsomely, as that usually translates to success on the ice and at the box office.
However, for NHL front offices living in the NHL’s flat cap world, mo’ money just equals mo’ problems.
The Colorado Avalanche are about to experience first-world problems of the highest order with important contracts expiring in each of the next two seasons, including most notably Nazem Kadri after this season and Nathan MacKinnon after the 2022-23 season. How the team navigates the next 12-18 months will be crucial in determining whether they can remain a dominant force in the NHL for years to come or whether their proverbial window will close too soon.
As outlined in a piece earlier this week for Daily Faceoff, the Avalanche organization has done an excellent job of investing in its core players with significant term deals that have aged well and provided surplus value.
That task was easier when the team was on the rise and only had a few superstars. The team has grown into a perennial contender with high-end players at every position, and those players that haven’t already received their just rewards are on the cusp of big pay days.
Let’s start with MacKinnon, even though he has one more year on his bargain contract with its cap hit of $6.3 million – because Colorado’s calculus starts with him.
Of the top 10 NHL scoring leaders as of Feb. 1, only Jonathan Huberdeau ($5.9 million) and Kadri have a lower cap hit than MacKinnon.
Take away Kadri and Johnny Gaudreau as pending UFAs, and aside from Huberdeau, every other player in the league’s top 10 has a cap hit between $8.5M and $12.5M.
The top five cap hits for forwards next season range from Mitch Marner’s $10.9 million to Connor McDavid’s $12.5 million. All of those deals were negotiated before the NHL had to adopt a flat cap to address COVID-19 revenue shortfalls, leaving teams scrambling to find space amidst escalating salaries.
But MacKinnon is certainly worthy of being discussed among this very select group of elite NHL players, and a cap hit in the same range is expected. MacKinnon will still only be 27 when his current deal expires, so a seven or eight-year extension wouldn’t put him too far past his prime and require much of any age-related discount.
One thing the Avalanche have going for them is MacKinnon’s apparent willingness to take less to ensure a winning team. MacKinnon has been quoted as saying: “On my next deal, I’ll take less again. Because I want to win with this group.”
It’s hard to see agent Pat Brisson, with $1.1 billion in active contract dollars under his management, allowing his client do the Avs any more favors, so MacKinnon may have to wrestle Brisson to make a team-friendly deal happen.
Regardless, one thing is certain: Even a team-friendly deal is an eight digit salary cap hit.
When the MacKinnon deal expires, the concurrent expiry of defenseman Erik Johnson may be just what the doctor ordered. Johnson currently hits the cap at $6 million per year. Even if the Avs want to re-sign him as a 35-year old, one can expect his cap hit to drop considerably and a deal could be structured using the NHL’s 35-plus bonus mechanism to defer cap charges if necessary.
Alternatively, the Avs could replace Johnson with an entry-level defenseman or a journeyman in the $1 million or less tax bracket.
The Avs may therefore have the good fortune of sliding most of Johnson’s cap space over to MacKinnon.
Problem solved!
Of course, nothing is ever that easy, and the Avalanche will also have to contend that offseason with the expiry of the contracts to forwards J.T. Compher and Tyson Jost, not to mention the fact that Bowen Byram and Alex Newhook will be coming off their entry-level deals.
In fact, the timing of MacKinnon’s next deal with the Avalanche might be paramount to getting a complete long-term picture of Colorado’s cap. Free agency opens on July 13, but the Avalanche may even be able to sign MacKinnon to an extension as soon as July 1, even though the contract would not start until 2023-24.
At the very least, the Avalanche could begin negotiating with MacKinnon then and have a strong grasp on his ballpark, which would allow them to better divide the total future dollars for years ahead on players like Kadri.
While addressing MacKinnon first would be helpful, it still does not solve next season’s dilemma: What to do with Naz?
Kadri has had a sensational 2021-22 season and has set himself up nicely for a generous raise from his current $4.5 million cap hit. A recent report indicated that the current plan for the Kadri camp is to explore free agency this summer, setting up a contract negotiation showdown that will be monitored closely.
How rich could a Kadri extension get?
Not many guys have a career year at age 31, so I expect the negotiation to be a challenging one for both sides. Here are the cap hits for next year of forwards age 30-plus:
Kadri’s camp will be advancing comparables who recently signed rich retirement-type deals in their thirties (think Blake Wheeler’s 5 x $8.25 in 2018, Nicklas Backstrom’s 5 x $9.2 in 2020, or Logan Couture’s 8 x $8 in 2019).
Kadri’s representatives also may try to point to older deals for scoring agitators in the same mold as Kadri who signed in their late twenties, such as Jamie Benn (8 x $9.5 in 2016) or even Corey Perry’s eight-year deal in 2013 that paid $8.625 million through to the end of last season.
Those are all numbers I don’t expect any team (let alone the Avalanche) will be comfortable with given the constrained salary caps around the league. I am also not sure Kadri has enough of a career scoring pedigree to justify keeping company with those deals, but they will definitely create upward pressure on where his deal lands.
If the Avs want Kadri to remain in their mix, there will be a walk-away number in their minds and they aren’t likely to deviate from it. I expect their strategy would be to characterize this season as a statistical anomaly – that Kadri is a great fit on their team but unlikely to repeat the numbers he has put up this season.
I think they would also point to the signing of their 29-year old captain, Gabriel Landeskog, as an internal cap on what they would be prepared to offer. I can’t imagine the Avs paying Kadri more than Landeskog, who is two years younger and who has scored more consistently than Kadri over their careers with a similar in-your-face style of game. It also probably wouldn’t be prudent for the Avs to sign Kadri to a long-term deal that puts him into his late thirties when Landeskog will already be in that situation.
Maybe the Avs offer a contract such as that of Joe Pavelski, who, in July 2019 just shy of his 35th birthday, signed a three-year x $7 million deal following a 38-goal season. They might also look at Taylor Hall’s offseason deal with the Bruins, a four-year deal worth $6 million per year, Paul Stastny’s three-year, $6.5M per year deal from 2018, or Mats Zuccarello’s 5-year $6 million deal in 2019.
It’s possible that Max Pacioretty’s four-year deal at $7 million in 2019 could serve as the high end of their cap and term tolerance.
The bottom line is the sweet spot for the Avs for a reasonable contract for Kadri that could still fit their cap structure is probably between $6 and $7 million, with term influenced by how close it gets to $7 million.
With the cap expected to increase by about $1 million next year, a number still not yet confirmed because of the major hit to revenue with COVID-19 restrictions in Canada, it wouldn’t require major roster surgery to fit that into their books.
If that can’t be achieved, the Avalanche may have to start thinking of Kadri as their own rental player for this year’s playoffs. They can hope for a strong playoff and then walk away, believing that his play will regress with age and that the freed up cap space going forward will help them retain, and possibly add, other players.
That savings might be important for the potential re-signing of talented wingers André Burakovsky and/or Valeri Nichushkin, both of whom have played increased roles for Colorado this year and will easily surpass their previous career highs in points by season’s end. The Avs can count on needing at least another $1 to $1.5 million to address both players’ anticipated extension demands.
If Kadri is re-signed, it will be very difficult to also retain both Nichushkin and Burakovsky, while maintaining a focus in net with Darcy Kuemper also set to hit unrestricted free agency this summer.
If Kadri is in, the relatively costly Burakovsky may have to be sacrificed to make all of the other pieces fit. Unless the Avs have other ideas up their sleeves, their biggest offseason decision may be choosing between Kadri and Burakovsky.
Yes, the task for Colorado is daunting, and it is unlikely that they will be able to keep the entire group together.
Luckily, players like Landeskog, Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen, Samuel Girard and Devon Toews are locked in and not going anywhere, and MacKinnon is a sure bet to stick around as well. They are in no danger of becoming a lottery team any time soon. And if they make the right bets with their UFAs at season’s end, this is a team that should be able to contend for a long time.
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Chris Gear joined Daily Faceoff in Jan. 2022 after a 12-year run with the Vancouver Canucks, most recently as the club’s Assistant General Manager and Chief Legal Officer. Before migrating over to the hockey operations department, where his responsibilities included contract negotiations, CBA compliance, assisting with roster and salary cap management and governance for the AHL franchise, Gear was the Canucks’ vice president and general counsel.
Click here to read Gear’s other Daily Faceoff stories.