Avalanche Acquire Soderberg's Rights

			2015		2016
To Colorado	POS	Age	G/W	P	Cap
Carl Soderberg	F	29	13	44	UFA
--------------
To Boston	POS	Age	G/W	P	Cap
2015 6th Round Draft Pick

Not a great deal to see here, unless a signing gets done, but the Colorado Avalanche get exclusive negotiating rights to forward Carl Soderberg, only a week before he goes to the free market as an unrestricted free agent.

The cap crunch on the Boston Bruins was certainly made public over the last couple of weeks and with the official announcement of what the cap ceiling number was actually going to be, the Bruins were quick to try to gain something before they were to lose assets for nothing.

I was originally mistaken to think that Soderberg was going to be an RFA this Summer, given the nature of it being an early contract he signed originally, not taking into account his age.  Since he was going into the free market, the deal makes a great deal of sense from the Bruins' perspective.

From the Avalanche perspective, it was released today that centre Ryan O'Reilly is not expected to be an Avalanche player for very much longer, as his contract demands for an extension are thought to be too great from an organizational standpoint.  If Colorado was to sign Soderberg to a new deal before July 1st, they would at least have some sort of Plan B, behind the loss of O'Reilly going forward.

From that organizational standpoint, the Avalanche would be gaining some cap flexibility, if they were to move O'Reilly and sign Soderberg in the short-term, but they would be taking somewhat of a hit on the talent/ability/experience between the two players.  The Avalanche are not exactly a team in need of that flexibility, which does ask a few more questions than it answers, but when it comes to committing large sums of cap space to one player, the answer seems to be clear, the Avalanche don't appear interested at this point.