The Colorado Avalanche had been concerned in one of many NHL’s largest current blockbusters on Friday night time once they despatched star ahead Mikko Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes as a part of a three-team commerce that introduced them forwards Martin Necas and Jack Drury.
They performed their first sport after the commerce on Saturday afternoon, dropping a 3-1 choice to the Boston Bruins.
After that sport, Avalanche gamers lastly had an opportunity to publicly react to the commerce, and the workforce’s greatest participant, Nathan MacKinnon, had one of many stronger reactions.
MacKinnon known as the commerce “surprising,” before adding “I by no means thought in one million years he would go away. So yeah, it simply sucks. … It’s simply unlucky, dropping a fantastic buddy, a fantastic teammate, I’m going to overlook him.”
Surprising is an efficient technique to describe it, as a result of trades like this don’t sometimes occur between Stanley Cup contenders in the midst of the season.
Rantanen has not solely been a longtime member of the Avalanche’s core — serving to the workforce win the 2021-22 Stanley Cup — he’s additionally one of many NHL’s greatest offensive gamers. As of Saturday, he was sixth within the NHL scoring race and is a top-five scorer within the league over the previous 5 seasons.
He’s additionally nonetheless below the age of 30 and in what must be the prime of his profession.
Gamers like this don’t sometimes get traded.
Particularly not from contenders in the midst of a season.
However with Rantanen set to change into an unrestricted free agent after this season, and with the Avalanche unsure they’d have the salary-cap area to match his calls for, they opted to commerce him for 2 gamers in Necas and Drury who not solely have smaller salaries, however are additionally below workforce management past this season. Necas can also be a legit top-line participant and on tempo for greater than 90 factors this season.
It offers the Avalanche some short-term (and long-term) salary-cap flexibility, whereas additionally they acquired two middle-round draft picks within the deal that can be utilized as commerce bait.
From a hockey standpoint, there’s a probability this all works out long-term.
In a extra short-term outlook, nonetheless, it’s truthful to surprise how a lot a commerce like this will influence the locker room. Rantanen has been a key participant and a pacesetter for years, and he clearly had an in depth relationship with the workforce’s core. That may be a lot to switch and an enormous change for a workforce in the midst of a playoff race.
