29. Colorado Avalanche
Wins Added: -4.3 wins
Salary Added: -$13.6 million
In: Darcy Kuemper, Ryan Murray, Darren Helm, Kurtis MacDermid
Out: Philipp Grubauer, Joonas Donskoi, Brandon Saad, Ryan Graves, Conor Timmins, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Patrik Nemeth
The Avalanche had some gigantic contracts to sign this summer and paid the price to fit those pieces in. Losing starting goaltender Philipp Grubauer is the biggest loss for the team by far, but the next five players were also important contributors too. Joonas Donskoi and Brandon Saad were excellent in the middle six, Ryan Graves was mostly great in a top four role, Conor Timmins is coming into his own and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare is a strong fourth-line defensive center. It’ll be very tough to replace all of that and it’s why Colorado has a huge win offseason deficit.
Two of the players, Darren Helm and Kurtis MacDermid, really obfuscate things because they carry huge negative value, but the other two do help. Darcy Kuemper is no Grubauer, but when healthy has had some strong numbers for the Coyotes. Same goes for Ryan Murray, although his play did dip from his Columbus days. There’s no one to replace the two forwards lost and that’s the biggest issue, but Colorado is obviously hoping that can be done from within.