Expect A Facelift For Avalanche Next Season
(from the San Jose Mercury News)
By Jake Schaller
Staff Writer
May 13, 2006 - DENVER - Sitting in the somber Avalanche dressing room late Thursday night, Colorado forward Ian Laperriere was forced to take a double shot of reality.
His season was over, thanks to an abrupt four-game sweep in the Western Conference semifinals at the hands of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. And there was a good chance that many of his teammates - players about whom he spoke in reverential tones - would not be back with him the next year.
"That's the sad part of the new NHL - you can't keep everybody," Laperriere said. "It's a great bunch of guys around here. Hopefully they'll find a way. I don't know how, but hopefully they'll find a way to keep everybody around."
Forward Dan Hinote, one Colorado's seven unrestricted free agents, had a more realistic take.
"I wish, obviously, we could keep the team together," he said. "But, under the new system, it probably isn't going to be the case."
In part due to the new system - which includes a hard salary cap - and in part due to some deficiencies exposed by the Ducks' sweep, the Avalanche likely will look a lot different next season.
"You can't keep them all," NBC hockey analyst Mike "Doc" Emrick said. "This is a general manager's league now because the salary cap is in place."
Of the 27 players on Colorado's playoff roster, only 11 are signed with the team through next season. That doesn't include Marek Svatos, a restricted free agent who suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in early March. And it does include Patrice Brisebois and Pierre Turgeon, a pair of disappointing free agents who might have the second seasons of their two-year contracts bought out to salvage some cap space.
So the Avalanche, and whomever is named the team's new general manager, has a laundry list of difficult decisions to face in the coming months.
The two biggest will be what to do with franchise cornerstone Joe Sakic and assistant captain Rob Blake, both of whom are unrestricted free agents. Pierre Lacroix, when he announced Friday he would be stepping down as the club's general manager but staying on as president, said signing those two players was the team's top priority, along with naming a new GM.
Sakic led the Avalanche in the regular season with 87 points (32 goals, 55 assists), and he had a team-high four goals in the playoffs. And Blake, after a dreadful start to the season, played at an All-Star level starting in January and was arguably the team's top player in the postseason.
Both expressed a desire to re-sign with Colorado. But both are 36 years old.
"I think Joe Sakic is synonymous with the franchise, both with Quebec and Colorado," said Bill Clement, the host of OLN's NHL studio show and a veteran of 12 NHL seasons. "I think Joe is still a fantastic hockey player, and I'd be shocked if he didn't re-sign with Avalanche. Rob Blake is a different case. The two guys in Ottawa, Wade Reddon and Zdeno Chara, are unrestricted free agents. Wade Reddon has a little more mobility than Rob at this stage of his career, so maybe you look at someone who can give you the same things who is a bit younger."
Colorado's other unrestricted free agents are defensemen Karlis Skrastins, Brett Clark and Bob Boughner and forwards Hinote and Jim Dowd. Among the club's 10 restricted free agents are forwards Alex Tanguay and Svatos and defensemen John-Michael Liles and Ossi Vaananen.
The Avalanche likely will make moves to get younger and faster. Though Colorado was by no means a slow team, it was outskated by Anaheim in the conference semifinals.
Asked about what the first year of the post-lockout NHL taught teams, Clement said: "You learned that your special teams had better damn well be good. And you learned that smaller men with great mobility and agility and speed are worth far more now than two years ago and big men, as tough as they are, if they can't move, they can't play in the new game."
Goalie Jose Theodore, who was acquired by the team at the trading deadline and will earn $5.5 million next season, and, ostensibly, Sakic and Blake, could take up a good bit of cap space. But Lacroix insists the Avalanche has plenty of wiggle room, especially because the salary cap - $39 million last season - is expected to be increased by 10 percent.
"In the coming months, we will have the luxury of re-signing our star veterans, as well as free agents, because we will be in a strong position in respect to the salary cap," Lacroix said.