Barrie Settles With Avs

The last of the arbitration worthy players, defenseman Tyson Barrie, actually made it to the hearing process, but on Sunday afternoon, it was announced that the two sides had come to an agreement, not long before the arbitrator made their ruling.  Barrie was the only player to make it to the process, which may or may not have helped the process, as the two sides came to a 4-year, $22 million deal.

Barrie, 25, is coming off another great season, albeit not his best, but still a pretty good outing in the 2016 season.  In 78 games, he finished with 13 goals and 49 points, ranking 14th among all blueliners in scoring.

His career-high in points came in the 2015 season, where he picked up 53 points for the Avalanche and I think Barrie could lift his game back up to that level for the 2017 season, as I have him currently projected in the 55-point range, which should mean he'll be a top end pick, thanks to the onus on blueliners this pool has had in the last few years.

There was a lot of chatter about Barrie being held out there as trade bait, because of his potential cap hit and the $5.5 million per season does take a significant chunk out of what the Avalanche had to work with, as they now feature a projected 23-man lineup, in colour below, that only has about $630,000 left in cap space.  At this point, it would be somewhat silly for the Avalanche to start dealing a top two defenseman like Barrie, since they have it all fitting into place today, but he would be the easiest to move, given his upside and his age, because a team would certainly welcome a deal like this one under their roof.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Nathan MacKinnon	6.300	Erik Johnson	6.000	Semyon Varlamov	5.900
Matt Duchene	6.000	Tyson Barrie	5.500
Gabriel Landeskog	5.500	Francois Beauchemin	4.500
Jarome Iginla	5.333
Carl Soderberg	4.750
Joe Colborne	2.500
Blake Comeau	2.400
Mikhail Grigorenko	1.300
John Mitchell	1.800	Fedor Tyutin	2.000	Calvin Pickard	1.000
Cody McLeod	1.333	Eric Gelinas	1.575
Rocco Grimaldi	0.925	Nikita Zadorov	0.894
J.T. Compher	0.925	Patrick Wiercioch	0.800
Mikko Rantanen	0.894
Andreas Martinsen	0.640
A.J. Greer	0.742	Chris Bigras	0.874	Spencer Martin	0.925
Julien Nantel	0.680	Duncan Siemens	0.874	Jeremy Smith	0.600
Troy Bourke	0.632	Sergei Boikov	0.682
Reid Petryk	0.623	Mason Geertsen	0.650
Trent Vogelhuber	0.613	Cody Corbett	0.617
Jim O'Brien	0.600	Ryan Stanton	0.600
Mike Sislo	0.600	Mat Clark	0.600
Samuel Henley	0.587	Joe Whitney	0.600
Turner Elson	0.575

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system