To the people asking for this organization to trade Tyson Barrie... good god. Do you people want to suck forever? You never appreciate what you have until it's gone. The guy is on pace for 62 freaking points and people want to trade him? Of course he has his defensive warts but you trade him and who in the blue hell is going to produce for us from the back end? And don't anyone say Cale Makar because he's got years to go before he can even potentially produce offence the way Barrie can.
He's struggling right now, that's something we can all see. It doesn't mean ship him out. I'm still not convinced he is healthy.
I find it strange reading this kind of comment because everything is setup so that we DO move out Barrie in the not too distant future :
- Barrie went through the arbitration process a year and a half ago, would you like to see the list of players who end up staying with the team for the whole contract after that? It's quite a short list.
- The Avs drafted TWO right-handed D-Men last draft with their top draft picks (Makar and Timmins will be in the NHL before too long)
Of course people are going to point to Makar, he was the 4th overall pick last year. It's not unreasonable to expect him to be in the NHL soon-ish. (whether that's MY strategy or anyone else's is irrelevant...if the Avs feel Makar is ready for the NHL, they'll sign him next spring and we'll see him finish out the year like we saw Jost last spring.)
But that's neither here nor there : the actual facts are that most people look at the Avalanche roster and it leaves them scratching their heads. The Avs have a really good collection of talent but finished dead-last a year ago and are now below .500 again this season. You look at teams like Vegas and New Jersey and when you compare them with the Avs on paper the players and the talent...something just doesn't add up.
For me, I see things very much like this : remember how
FOR YEARS it always seemed way more complicated and difficult than it needed to be to find wingers that Matt Duchene could play with? The whole chemistry thing always seemed to be 'off''? Does that remind you of anyone on the backend at all? Isn't Barrie that very same guy where we're always having a hard time finding him the right partner?? EJ you can pretty much plug anyone and he's good-to-go but Barrie, it's always more complicated. We played one game without him this year and I thought the defense looked frikkin' fantastic. Maybe its a coincidence, maybe it's not.
If we are out of it come trade deadline time, I think he gets moved out. There's a good chance our 1st round pick in 2018 is going to end up a D-Man as well so if the Avs can move out Barrie and fill a need (Mitch Marner would be a good fit - he's that Claude Giroux/Matt Barzal pure playmaker type that I keep going on about and that would improve our offense quite a bit) I think the Avs will do it.
Think of it this way : if we are not winning with a guy like Barrie being on pace to put up 62 points in our lineup, then it's probably time for a change. At some point, something has to give.
