TSN: The Colorado Avalanche are looking for a top-nine forward and if one or both of Gabriel Landeskog ($7 million) or Erik Johnson ($6 million) are LTIR’d for the rest of the regular season, they’ll have some room to work with at the trade deadline according to Pierre LeBrun.
“I’ll tell you this, I think they will absolutely be able to use either Johnson’s or Landeskog’s salary at the deadline, one or the other. Which means more flexibility for the Stanley Cup champions as they try to add before the deadline.
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Listen, Ryan O’Reilly would’ve been of interest, Jonathan Toews, who is no longer on the market because of health reasons. Those guys aren’t available, so I think for Colorado they are still looking at a top-nine forward, but they’re also looking at defensive depth because they’ve had a lot of injuries.”
Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic: Forward Gabriel Landeskog started skating this week and there is no timeline. They had hoped for before the end of the regular season but that may not happen. Will they need to keep his $7 million available or will he remain on the LTIR for the regular season and gain that space for the deadline?
Erik Johnson is out multiple weeks at $6 million and will he be LTIR’d for the rest of the regular season?
They’d rather have the players back and not on the LTIR but they could have trade deadline flexibility. Now, they’ve traded prospects in previous years and are without their second and third-round picks for the next two years.
Avs GM Chris MacFarland:
“And if we can find a way to improve the team, then we’re going to try to do that over the next seven, eight days. We’ll continue to chip away, and if we can find the right deal to improve the team and the acquisition cost makes sense, and cap-wise we can make it work, then that’s what we’ll look to do.”
When asked if they are also looking at defensive depth given their injuries on the blue line this year, MacFarland said they haven’t been focusing on just one position.
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“Our back end, like you pointed out, Bo Byram has missed a lot of time this year, Cale obviously, Josh Manson missed two months. There’s that old adage: You can never have enough defensemen.
“And I think that’s proven accurate. We’re not going to go in any kind of positional silo. If there’s a hockey deal that makes sense, then we’re going to look at it regardless of position.”