Avs Re-Sign Chris Stewart

Another major restricted free agent came off the list on Thursday evening, as the Colorado Avalanche have taken care of 2010's breakout players, Chris Stewart.  Stewart signed a new 2-year deal with the club, said to be worth $5.75 million.  That should work out to be a cap hit of $ per season.  This is Stewart's first deal outside of his entry-level deal

Stewart was a big surprise for the Avalanche, picking up 28 goals and 36 assists in 77 games, ranking him 61st in pool scoring among the whole league and 44th among all forwards.  That kind of production could be worth a 3rd, 4th or 5th round pick in this year's draft, depending on how many people show up.

Stewart was a big part of Leon G.'s draft win last season, as a waiver draft pick-up during the season, he just continued to score and wasn't the flash in the pan everyone else thought he might be by skipping over him in the the draft.  Stewart will likely be looked upon to repeat, if not improve, on those numbers from last season, so the Avalanche can make it back into the playoffs for a second consecutive year.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Paul Stastny	John-Michael Liles	Craig Anderson
Chris Stewart	Kyle Quincey	Peter Budaj
Matt Duchene	Ryan Wilson
Milan Hejduk	Kyle Cumiskey
T.J. Galiardi	Scott Hannan
Ryan O'Reilly	Adam Foote
Brandon Yip	Tom Preissing
Daniel Winnik
Cody McLeod
David Jones
David Koci

So, if what we read is supposed to be true, the Avalanche are now sitting with 11 forwards, seven defense and two goalies, plus one buyout, which has an annual cap hit of $41.5 million, which is still below the salary cap floor, believe it or not.  In theory, the Avalanche only need two more forwards to really round out their roster, they still have Peter Mueller (a restricted free agent) to sign this Summer and they need to fill $1.9 million.  Okay, that shouldn't be a problem with Mueller coming up, but as a budget team, they have done very well to fill out their roster for the 2011 season.

Even with the signing of Stewart on the books and the eventual signing of Mueller shouldn't be too far away, I think there are still a number of question marks still hanging over the Avalanche going into the 2011 season.

Sure, the Avalanche have lots of talent on this team, especially offensively, but it did show some weaknesses down the stretch last year and the rookies are now sophomores, which is another hill to climb for many second-year players. 

Craig Anderson is a big goalie with large shoulders, but will he be able to carry this team again to all those wins again?  One year doesn't prove much in this league, especially fantasy-wise.  Anderson has been around the block a few times, so his experience will have to come in handy.

I'm going to reserve a lot of my judgement for the draft to just before the draft, but at least I know what I'm looking for in those pre-season games.