Avs Re-Sign Barrie

That didn't take too long for number four on my list of outstanding restricted free agents to fall... after the post.

On Thursday, the Colorado Avalanche announced that they have re-signed defenseman Tyson Barrie to a new 2-year contract, successfully bridging his entry-level deal to a potential long-term deal, as this new agreement is worth $2.6 million per year.

With the new deal, the Avalanche are now free and clear of all their RFA's and can now fully look towards training camp, which starts in a couple of weeks.

As it was mentioned a couple of days ago on my RFA post, Barrie had a whale of a 2014 season, finishing 28th among all defensemen in scoring with 13 goals and 38 points in 64 games in Colorado and the sky seems to be the limit for this kid.

He will turn out to be a very desirable player in this year's hockey pool, as defensemen grow very popular among the first few rounds, since there are very few that can reach the upper echelons of scoring, somewhere we could see Barrie ending up in the next few seasons.  In terms of points per game among his fellow blueliners, who had played half or more games last season, Barrie finished 14th with a scoring rate of 0.594 ppg.

In my own projections, I have him in a very favourable position, atop the Avalanche blueliners in scoring, assuming he can play the whole year.

The salary cap isn't too much of an issue with Barrie locked in now, as the bridge deal still leaves the club with about $4.1 million to use on two open roster spots. I can see a couple of those spots being used up by talent within the organization, which should leave more than enough to work with come trade deadline time.