Prospective Look at Colorado

It was some shrewd movement at the trade deadline that secured the Avalanche's place in the playoffs this season and the forecast for the summer looks to be some of the same. The Avalanche team that was eliminated from the playoffs was full of potential free agents, both restricted and unrestricted, so GM Francois Giguere will have his work cut out for himself.

The team has 11 regular players with contracts signed on for next season, plus a couple players who were up & down from the minors through the year, but they will have to earn their spot on the roster before they hit the regular player list. These 11 players on the list will earn approximately $27.5 million, which is about half of the reported expected salary cap number.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Paul Statsny	Ruslan Salei	Peter Budaj
Milan Hejduk	Brett Clark
Ryan Smyth	Scott Hannan
Tyler Arnason	Jordan Leopold
Ben Guite
Ian Laperriere

There is a pretty good core of players sitting on this list and it's all at a reasonable price as well. The six forwards are a good mix between the top end talent of the team and the quality third & fourth line grinders that are extra-useful in the Northwest Division. On the blueline, there is a good mix of talent there as well. It's certainly a point from where they can build from, adding a piece here and there for a good quality top six. In net, Peter Budaj is currently the only returning goalie and he had gone into last season with the job as the Avalanche starter, but then lost the job to potential unrestricted free agent, Jose Theodore. It will be quite curious to see which direction the management will choose to go in the crease.

The next big question would have to be, 'which type of free agents should they sew up next?' The unrestricted free agent crop from the Avalanche would be considered highly-sought after, but also quite expensive. Top end players like Joe Sakic, Jose Theodore, Peter Forsberg, John-Michael Liles, Adam Foote and Andrew Brunette will get all sorts of attention from the media spotlight and teams looking to improve themselves in spots. Both Sakic and Forsberg continue to gain momentum in the retirement talk, but neither player looks destined to hang them up right now.

On the other side of the coin, Marek Svatos (arbitration) & Wojtek Wolski are the team's two major restricted free agents heading into the off-season. Should they sure up the salary numbers for these two before they go after the big money players or vice versa? Both Svatos and Wolski could be targets for the offer sheet, especially if the Avs are going to be cash strapped to secure all their unrestricted free agents.

Of course, the free agent market will be filled to the brim of all sorts of talent at all sorts of prices. Could a new face emerge as a big name player in Denver?

As for Draft Day, they had moved their first round pick this summer (19th overall) to the Blue Jackets in the deal that brought Foote back to town. The pick would have been for 2009 if they didn't make the playoffs, but they snuck their way in, so they are now without the pick in this deep draft. The Avalanche won't make their first pick until the second round (49th overall). It also doesn't look very likely that they'll be a big player on Draft Day, unless they have a keen eye on a player in the Draft and they would move a young asset or two to get him.

Management will be watching intently as the league's bean counters tally up what the final number for the salary cap ceiling will be, as they likely have big intentions to open up the vault to keep some older faces and bring in some new ones.