Confirmed Signing with Link: [COL] Avalanche re-sign Calvin Pickard (2 years, $1.025M AAV)

[LobsterMagnet19]

Pickard is a good young goalie but Avs fans' willingness to jump on the Pickard Hype train and throw Varlamov, the only thing keeping the team competitive for 3 years, under the bus is absolutely insane. Avs fans just have no idea how good they've got it right now with Varly and no one seems to remember the many many lean goaltending years between Roy and Varly.

 

[Mr Positive]

NEvermind, i'm mistake doh

 

[Balthazar]

Pickard is a good young goalie but Avs fans' willingness to jump on the Pickard Hype train and throw Varlamov, the only thing keeping the team competitive for 3 years, under the bus is absolutely insane. Avs fans just have no idea how good they've got it right now with Varly and no one seems to remember the many many lean goaltending years between Roy and Varly.

We need to trade Varly this summer while he still has value otherwise we'll lose him to Vegas next summer. If he doesn't have a good year Vegas won't pick him and if they don't want him for free, no team will want to give anything significant for him and his contract. Lose-lose for us.

This is a bad situation and we should trade him ASAP.

 

[DyerMaker66*]

Is Calvin better than Chet?

 

[DyerMaker66*]

We need to trade Varly this summer while he still has value otherwise we'll lose him to Vegas next summer. If he doesn't have a good year Vegas won't pick him and if they don't want him for free, no team will want to give anything significant for him and his contract. Lose-lose for us.

This is a bad situation and we should trade him ASAP.

David Aebischer or bust.

 

[LobsterMagnet19]

We need to trade Varly this summer while he still has value otherwise we'll lose him to Vegas next summer. If he doesn't have a good year Vegas won't pick him and if they don't want him for free, no team will want to give anything significant for him and his contract. Lose-lose for us.

This is a bad situation and we should trade him ASAP.

This is exactly the kind of nonsense that I'm talking about. What universe are you living in where A) the Avalanche don't protect Varlamov (which is the obvious no brainer choice) B) Vegas doesn't pick Varamov (a prospect which is downright laughable if he were made available) and C) Varlamov has a literal 0 sum trade value despite being an obvious above average starter on a fair contract.

Not one of those things is going to happen here in the real world.

 

[bohlmeister]

Is Calvin better than Chet?

Leagues better.

 

[Pierce Hawthorne]

Pickard is a good young goalie but Avs fans' willingness to jump on the Pickard Hype train and throw Varlamov, the only thing keeping the team competitive for 3 years, under the bus is absolutely insane. Avs fans just have no idea how good they've got it right now with Varly and no one seems to remember the many many lean goaltending years between Roy and Varly.

This just isn't true at all.

Varly had 1 good year for us, and he led us to a playoff berth for sure.


But before and after that he's been extremely mediocre. Last year he was barely above(He might have even been just below) the league average sv%.


I would even argue he was a contributing factor in why the Avs missed playoffs. Halfway through December his sv% was below .900 still. He cost us a lot of games in the beginning of the year, games that had we won we could've been playing hockey still in late April.



I think a lot of Avs fans like yourself still live in the 2013/14 season with Varly and still think he's this elite Top 5 goalie in the league. He's not. He's pretty average. He goes through short stretches where he looks like a Top 5 goalie, but he follows it up with stretches where he doesn't even look like a starter.



Remains to be seen with Pickard, but so far he looks far more consistent then Varly at the very least.

 

[MikeAvsPats]

This just isn't true at all.

Varly had 1 good year for us, and he led us to a playoff berth for sure.


But before and after that he's been extremely mediocre. Last year he was barely above(He might have even been just below) the league average sv%.


I would even argue he was a contributing factor in why the Avs missed playoffs. Halfway through December his sv% was below .900 still. He cost us a lot of games in the beginning of the year, games that had we won we could've been playing hockey still in late April.



I think a lot of Avs fans like yourself still live in the 2013/14 season with Varly and still think he's this elite Top 5 goalie in the league. He's not. He's pretty average. He goes through short stretches where he looks like a Top 5 goalie, but he follows it up with stretches where he doesn't even look like a starter.



Remains to be seen with Pickard, but so far he looks far more consistent then Varly at the very least.

I think numerous people here are unfamiliar with the word "consistent". Varly played bad last year yes, but how well can a goalie play when he is peppered night in and night out with 30+ shots, half of them being grade A scoring chances. The team vastly underachieved (in my eyes) for most of the first half, mind you Duchene's November. As a whole 2013-14 was, I am not going to say a "fluke", but the whole team overachieved vastly, including Varly, who should have won the Vezina. Giving up on Varly, who even when with Washington, is a clear #1 goalie, is just nonsense. Pickard may have the stuff eventually down the road that most of the people here are talking about, but we know with Varly he HAS the stuff capable of being the guy in Colorado. I have struggled through too many years of amateur goaltending after Roy left. Now that we have a #1 goalie, we are just ready to let him go or even pre-maturely trade him?

Varly is under 30 on a reasonably team-friendly priced contract. I vote to FOR SURE protect him from the expansion draft, and just hope that Pickard wont be picked up with the likes of Fleury/Murray, Bishop/Vasilevskii or any of the other goalies that I cant think of right now.

 

[tucker3434]

Much like the backup qb, the backup goalie is always the fans' favorite guy on the team.

Pickard will get his shot this year and next. We'll see how he does.

 

[The Abusement Park]

I really believe that Pickard will be a Crawford esque goalie. He's going to be a consistent goalie that you know what you are going to get every night. Sure Varly may have the ability to steal games more, but he also has the ability to play way below his level. Pickard is a quality goalie and has made the Avs think about who will be their goalie long term, which is quite impressive for Picks. This year for Picks will have a big impact on what happens this summer and season for our goalie situation.