Avs Meet Terms With Grigorenko

On Wednesday, the Colorado Avalanche agreed with restricted free agent Mikhail Grigorenko on a new 1-year deal, reportedly worth $1.3 million.  The deal, his first coming out of his entry-level deal, will act as a bridge to a possible long-term deal.

The 2016 season was his first in Colorado after coming over to the team from the Buffalo Sabres in the deal that sent Ryan O'Reilly the other way.  With the Avalanche, he was able to find some full-time work, appearing in 74 games and he scored 6 goals and 27 points in that time, good enough for 214th among all forwards.

The 12th overall pick in the 2012 draft hasn't really made the biggest of impacts in the league just yet, but he's finally starting to get some traction with his new club, enough to make it to the pool worthy section of the roster.  Maybe this 1-year deal will help spark a little bit of incentive into the 22-year old, a la the days of Alex Semin.  I do believe he will be trending upwards, so the early projection will be in the 35-point range to start.

The Avalanche are still lacking in the blueline department, at first glance of the roster below, but with Tyson Barrie still holding in restricted free agency and a possible trade target, there is still work that needs to be done.  The deal with Grigorenko still leaves over $5 million under the cap ceiling, which should be ample room for any movement with Barrie or someone new on the roster.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Nathan MacKinnon	6.300	Erik Johnson	6.000	Semyon Varlamov	5.900
Matt Duchene	6.000	Francois Beauchemin	4.500
Gabriel Landeskog	5.500
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	Chris Bigras	0.874
Mikko Rantanen	0.894	Patrick Wiercioch	0.800
Andreas Martinsen	0.640
A.J. Greer	0.742	Duncan Siemens	0.874	Spencer Martin	0.925
Julien Nantel	0.680	Sergei Boikov	0.682	Jeremy Smith	0.600
Troy Bourke	0.632	Mason Geertsen	0.650
Reid Petryk	0.623	Cody Corbett	0.617
Trent Vogelhuber	0.613	Ryan Stanton	0.600
Jim O'Brien	0.600	Mat Clark	0.600
Mike Sislo	0.600	Joe Whitney	0.600
Samuel Henley	0.587
Turner Elson	0.575

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