The Colorado Avalanche had been concerned in one of many NHL’s greatest current blockbusters on Friday night time after 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 recreation after the commerce on Saturday afternoon, dropping a 3-1 determination to the Boston Bruins.
After that recreation, Avalanche gamers lastly had an opportunity to publicly react to the commerce, and the group’s finest participant, Nathan MacKinnon, had one of many stronger reactions.
MacKinnon known as the commerce “stunning,” earlier than including “I by no means thought in one million years he would go away. So yeah, it simply sucks. … It’s simply unlucky, shedding an incredible pal, an incredible teammate, I’m going to overlook him.”
Surprising is an efficient strategy to describe it, as a result of trades like this don’t sometimes occur between Stanley Cup contenders in the course of the season.
Rantanen has not solely been a longtime member of the Avalanche’s core — serving to the group win the 2021-22 Stanley Cup — he’s additionally one of many NHL’s finest 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 ought to be the prime of his profession.
Gamers like this don’t sometimes get traded.
Particularly not from contenders in the course of a season.
However with Rantanen set to turn into an unrestricted free agent after this season, and with the Avalanche undecided 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 group management past this season. Necas can be a legit top-line participant and on tempo for greater than 90 factors this season.
It provides 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 likelihood this all works out long-term.
In a extra short-term outlook, nevertheless, it’s truthful to marvel how a lot a commerce like this may impression the locker room. Rantanen has been a key participant and a frontrunner for years, and he clearly had an in depth relationship with the group’s core. That may be a lot to switch and a giant change for a group in the course of a playoff race.
