And you thought we forgot about you!
Nope, no we didn’t. We’ve been keeping track of Avs news (there hasn’t been much), and we have to say, we don’t like much of what we’ve seen. Everyone else around us has gone out and gotten somebody - but despite Lacroix’s assurances that we’d be able to pick up a star this offseason, well, nothing much has happened. Now the team goes into the next season minus Tanguay and Blake, and plus, well, virtually no one. Not what I expected going into the offseason.
Still, here’s what’s been happening in Avaland:
We picked up center Tyler Arnason, a center who has played for the Blackhawks but was traded late last year to the Senators. He’s a young guy with a decent amount of offensive skill, but no Alex Tanguay - Tyler had just 45 points last year in 79 games.
We signed Kurt Sauer…ok…
…signed the dynamic duo of Clark and Skrastins, good…
…agreed to terms with Liles, Budaj, and McCormik, alright….
…signed McClean for another year, avoid arbitration…good call…
…and we’ve picked up, Ken Klee and Paul Stasny! YES!!! Wait…what?
Klee, a no-namer from New Jersey is a scrappy big blue-liner, who has never scored more than 20 points in a season except in one fluke year for Toronto. He does eat up some time (18+ per game), but as a replacement for Blake, which is basically how the Avs are trying to sell this, you’ve got to be KIDDING me!
You might recognize Paul Stasny as the standout DU forward who scored 29 goals in 28 games last year. Well, he was our second-round choice, and now we’ve signed him. He’s got some talent and he’s an excitingly fast player - but it’ll take a few years to see what he develops into.
Meanwhile, Justin Leopold, the guy we acquired for Tanguay, has gone down with surgery for a hernia, which will take him…well, apparently 10-12 weeks to recover. Seems a lot for a hernia, but as long as he’s ready for the season…
So that’s what’s up for the Avalanche. No big-name acquisitions, no start-studded contract swapping…just, a lot more of the same. If anything does happen though (and we expect it won’t), we’ll keep you posted.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks entered automatically, e-mail kept private. HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
