Yahoo Sports Avalanche Go A Different Direction Than The Leafs, Lightning And Oilers With Rantanen Trade
Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images
The Colorado Avalanche’s strategic decision to deal star right winger Mikko Rantanen on Friday signifies many things – but it underscores how rare these types of blockbuster moves can be for NHL teams in the salary cap era.
Yet when a team has decided it doesn’t want to follow a path that other teams have followed – namely, the idea you can build a top-heavy squad around three or four star players, with the rest of the roster filled in with bargain-basement deals – there’s only one choice ahead. That choice is to do what the Avalanche have done this week: go for a more balanced roster rather than front-load their squad.
Unquestionably, the teams that have chosen the route of primarily investing in a few stars have encountered significant roster problems in one regard or another. For proof, look no further than the Toronto Maple Leafs (and their ‘Core Four’), the Tampa Bay Lightning and eventually, the Edmonton Oilers.
The Leafs have been legitimately questioned for devoting more than $46 million out of the NHL’s $88-million salary cap upper ceiling to Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and John Tavares. That has hamstrung what Leafs GM Brad Treliving has been able to do in other areas, most notably in their depth at forward. As a result, a steady stream of low-paid young players and fringe NHLers have come in and out of Leafs Land. That carousel will likely continue if the Buds use their remaining cap space to give Marner a raise next season.
Even with a pay cut to looming UFA center John Tavares, the Leafs will be limited in what they can pay to free agents and trade acquisitions because of their philosophy with the Core Four. If it doesn’t work out in a deep playoff run this season, there will be more than a few bitter Leafs fans who once again want an end to this team-building experiment.
The Tampa Bay Lightning have also put paying a few star players well ahead of keeping as much of their Stanley Cup-winning group together as possible. In a non-capped NHL, it would’ve been feasible for the Bolts to hang onto captain Steven Stamkos for his entire career and augment the roster with more stars. But the Lightning instead replaced Stamkos with left winger Jake Guentzel and paid four of their players – Guentzel, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy – at least $9 million apiece. That’s not quite 50 percent of the Lightning’s salary structure, but it is building a team with a few elite players and a rotating cast of lesser talents around the core.
Related: The Tampa Bay Lightning's Rebuild On The Fly Is A Mirage
Starting next season, the Oilers have committed $12.5 million to superstar Connor McDavid, $14 million to superstar center Leon Draisaitl and $9.25 million to defenseman Darnell Nurse. That adds up to $35.75 million in cap costs for just three players, and they still need to re-sign RFA defenseman Evan Bouchard. That number will spike even higher once McDavid becomes a UFA in the summer of 2026.
The Oilers will have to make some stark choices about many of their players. They’ll almost certainly have to persuade many of them to take less than market value or look elsewhere for players who will take less money to play in Edmonton.
Related: If The Edmonton Oilers Won't Use Jeff Skinner, Another NHL Team Will: Four Fits
You can understand why Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland decided to go in a different direction with his core. He dealt a legitimate difference-maker in Rantanen, who sought a major raise on his $9.25-million cap hit, for an above-average center in Martin Necas, who is cost-controlled at $6.5 million for this year and next year. The team gained about $1 million in cap space this season and potentially saved a lot more in future seasons if Rantanen gets $13 million annually or more on a new deal.
That will make life considerably easier for the Avs to eventually give a raise to superstar Cale Makar when he’s due for a new contract at the end of the 2026-27 campaign. But Colorado has chosen to build around MacKinnon and Makar and focus on adding players for the rest of the roster who won't cost more than $10 million annually. Makar is already underpaid at $9 million this season.
Given that the Avs have $3.98 million in cap space this season with Gabriel Landeskog and Tucker Poolman on LTIR, they can try to find the depth they had in 2022 when they captured the Cup. In Denver, short-term pain is long-term gain, and it takes guts for Avs management to take a different approach with their top talent than many teams have.
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