The 5 Worst Contracts On The Colorado Avalanche

In a salary cap, sign your young players, lock up your RFA’s, sign the best player available FAST on Free Agent day, type of hockey world that we live in, there is no shortage of a wide variety of contracts. You have the short term-prove-yourself-because-you-are-so-old-we-are-surprised-you-didn’t-fall-apart-during-your-PTO type contracts. There is the prove-yourself-because you-are-young-and-we-want-to-see-if-we-didn’t-waste-that-high-round-pick-on-you-instead-of-that-guy-who-is-playing-really-well-for-the-team-that-drafted-after-us type contract. There is the bridge deal. There is the long term, big money superstar contracts. There is the average money/average term for an average player contract. All types. But let’s focus on the fun contracts. The so bad, they will always be talked about type contracts. The Avs have a few of these, so enough blabber, let’s get to it. Note: These are not ranked 1-5. That would be a tedious, worthless thing to do. What’s the point? It’s like, why did that one teacher give you 83% on your essay rather than 84%? What magic algorithm did they use to come up with that number?

*By the way, we hope you appreciate the fact that we didn’t make this into a 6 slide type slideshow post for clicks. And that we didn’t name the article “You won’t believe what these NHL teams did to these players! WOW! Gary Bettman saw this and his jaw DROPPED!”

The Player: Maxime Noreau

Length: 2 years

Years left: 1 (current season)

Money: $625,000

If you’re thinking “how is a small deal like this for an AHLer considered the 5^th worst contract on the team?” then we only have a few sentences that should change your mind. Noreau was lured here from Europe, on what was most likely a recommendation by Matt Duchene, who played with Noreau during the last lockout. The bad part? Noreau was signed to a 1 way contract, meaning no matter where he plays, he is getting the full amount of money, and all of it counts against the cap. That is just silly. Noreau probably said he wasn’t coming over unless he was making full money, which is fair, but still. What a waste of money and cap space.

Player: Brad Stuart

Length: 3 years

Years left: 1 after this season

Money: $3.6M

If you clicked this article without this contract in mind, we would love to hear your top 5. Stuart came over in a trade for a 2^nd(!!!!!) and a 6^th round pick with San Jose. Then, before he even played 1 second with the Avs, in training camp or practice or anything, he was offered a whopping 3.6 million dollars. What a risk to take on an old D-man who was already on a huge downswing. Avs brass really messed this one up as one of their first deals. Even if Stuart played relatively well during his time here, which he hasn’t, it still would be an awful contract. The best thing he has done is get hurt. That created a chain reaction of giving Guenin more ice time, realizing Guenin is also bad, demoting/scratching Guenin, and giving the young guys a chance to play. How is Stuart going to fit into this team next year, and who is ever going to take his contract?

The Player: Carl Soderberg

Length: 5 years

Years left: 4 after this season

Money: $4.75M

Carl Soderberg is good. He is an effective member of the team that can play in many situations. He is not, however, 4.75 million dollars good. He is not “not even a million less than Landeskog” good. This contract was 3 things: Bring in a center to replace O’Reilly; Panic because O’Reilly is gone so overpay a player who has barely ever seen 2^nd line minutes; feel okay about overpaying as a kind of “haha” to O’Reilly. That last one is not confirmed, and many may disagree, but giving Soderberg this much money after letting a way better player walk may have ulterior motives in terms of sticking it to ROR. Bottom line: Soderberg has never scored more than 16 goals and is making star player money. He better turn into a 2-way dynamo and make us eat our words.

The Player: Hick Holden

Length: 3 years

Years left: 2 after this season

Money: $1.65M

The money? Fantastic for the mileage the Avs get out of Holden. The length: this is what make the contract one of the worst. Holden was brought in from Columbus while making 600K a year, and after a good year with the Avs (10 goals) he was given the new contract that kicked in at the beginning of this season. But what were the Avs thinking, signing him though 2018? With prospects out the rear end coming up (Siemens, Bigras, Geertson) and roster main stays (EJ, Barrie) did they destine Holden to the bottom pairing?

The Player: Tyson Barrie

Length: 2 years

Years left: 0 after this season (RFA)

Money: $2.6M

Barrie deals with the same people that dealt with Ryan O’Reilly and Ryan Johansen. Meaning they brainwash their players into a false sense of self-worth to the point where they fail to report to their jobs until they get the money they want. If every job was like this, the world would explode, but they are athletes. Entertainers. And some we are at their mercy. Anyways, the Avs would have been better off giving Barrie a long term deal at around 5-6 million dollars. Say a nice juicy 7 year, 42 million dollar deal. (6 Million per year for the mathematically challenged). We don’t need to type about why that would have been good. Instead, during the years where the Avs have all the cap space they could ever need, they sign him to a bridge deal. 2.6 million bucks, and the contract expires after Barrie has just enough time to show how good he is and how good he is going to be. Bottom line: You don’t bridge deal a sure thing. Isn’t that right PK Subban? Guaranteed, the Avs are going to be breaking their team set $6M personal cap in order to keep Barrie. So what will happen? There will be a nasty contract battle, Barrie will get signed, or not, and either way, a lot of players are going to resent Barrie’s financial decisions. Oh, and that stupid player agent company will be laughing all the way to the bank and there will be another lockout and owners will complain, almost rightfully so. Almost.

We hope you enjoyed the analysis of the Avs contracts and a special thanks to General Fanager for taking all of CapGeek’s stuff and putting it on a new platform. Just kidding, General Fanager is a life saver and the name is simple and clever. Agree? Disagree? @ us (it makes us feel like we matter) or comment below. You won’t comment. So just @ us.