What the? Avs trade…who?!
It’s true, everything you heard is true. The Colorado Avalanche recently traded Alex Tanguay, 78-point man, to the divisional rival Calgary Flames? In return, they get Jordan Leopold, a decent, time-sucking (I mean that in a good way) defenseman and a second round pick. Now I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the same thing I was thinking: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!
Before you jump off a cliff or something, think about this: In last year’ playoffs, the Avs finished at number 8 in goals for, posting 22 goals in the post season. That seems pretty good, especially for just making it to the fourth game of the second round…until you look at goals against, where the Avs allowed 31 goals, making them fourth-worst in the league. By comparison, Edmonton allowed just less than 50% more goals (61) in almost 3 times as many games, and Carolina’s numbers are similar. Both Stanley Cup finals teams were positive in Goal Differential, whereas the Avs are a stunning -9. When you break it down, the Avs were doing just fine on offense, scoring 2.44 goals a game, despite being shut out numerous times. But the defense allowed 3.44 goals a game during the playoffs. Every single Conference Finals team let in less than 3 goals a game.
Now let’s look at Alex Tanguay’s contributions to the team during the playoffs. Six points in nine games. Now, he was fabulous during the regular season, and we really would have missed his production - but when you get right down to it, when it really counted, we weren’t missing any offense. We were missing defense. And that’s why this trade makes some amount of sense.
Looking at Jared Leopold, he was a 20-pt. defenseman last year, scoring only two goals. But everyone says he’s capable of 10 or 15, and as a bonus, he’s only 25, so we actually gain a year in the trade. (Tanguay is 26). Plus, Leopold is exactly the sort of defenseman we need to secure the blue line. Like Blake, he eats up a ton of minutes (avg 22:19 minutes last year), which means he’s obviously very solid defensively.
Our defense core was quite honestly very weak last year. We had two good lines of defense, in Blake/Liles (Liles actually had his fair share of troubles, however) and Skarstins/Clark, but beyond that, Vaananen was streaky, and obviously a non-factor in the second half, and Patrice Brisebois, though good at times, also had a lot of bad moments. This now gives us a dominant third line of defense, with either Brisebois/Leopold, or probably more likely, Vaananen/Leopold making up a very good line. Now assuming this isn’t a move attempting to replace Blake, it gives us the defensive core we desperately needed last year.
And even despite Tanguay, the offense will be fine. We still have Sakic and Brunette (140+ points combined on the first line), Hedjuk, who is capable of having a way better year than he did last year, Laaksonen (34 points) and Laperriere (21 goals). Plus, Wolski will be with the Avs for the entire season, and Svatos (50 points in about half a season) will be back and healthy, as will Konowalchuk (who had 22 goals in the last NHL season three years ago). And don’t forget, our defense can put up a lot of points too.
So if Leopold can add 20 solid minutes of defense to a game, I actually think it’s a…decent trade. It accomplishes two things: first, it takes a lot of minutes off of Blake, who gets real tired by the end of a season, and second, it keeps our shakier defenders off the ice. Meanwhile, even though the Avs finished fourth in scoring last year, a lot of it due to Tanguay, the Avs actually underachieved like crazy, when you consider that Hedjuk had a horrible season, their leading goal-scorer at the time was injured halfway through the season, and Konowalchuk, a very good playmaker and a bit of a scorer himself, was out nearly the entire season.
The only thing that really bugs me about this trade is that it went to a divisional rival. Seeing Alex Tanguay more than once or twice a year is not going to be fun - I know it wasn’t fun for the Flames when they were the ones trying to contain him.
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1. Dale - June 29, 2006 @ 6:14 pm
I had heard from a number of people that Alex was traded as much for his bad decision making as for getting a good defenseman. Things like bad passes, no passes, being out of position.
2. Gabe Stein - June 29, 2006 @ 6:28 pm
Could be. He was known for blowing 2-on-1’s, and lame shootout moves, jees! The knock on him has always been that he’s capable of much more than he’s producing, and that he just doesn’t always have the drive to be a truly great player - and perhaps there’s evidence of that in the errant passing you talked about.