The Tomas Tatar era with the Colorado Avalanche has already come to an end.
On Friday afternoon, the Avalanche announced that they had traded the 33 year old veteran winger to the Seattle Kraken. In exchange, Colorado received a 2024 fifth round pick.
Does the move come as a surprise? Not really. When I spoke to Tatar last week, it was pretty clear he wasn’t super excited about his role on the team, but the reality is, he never seemed to mesh well in Colorado’s system.
Still, it was a smart, low-risk move to make in the summer. Tatar cost just $1.5 million in cap space, and in the trade, the Avalanche are not believed to be retaining anything. That’s huge moving forward, because Colorado is not going to be able to accumulate cap space as the season goes on, due to their use of LTIR. The fifth round pick doesn’t hurt, either. It’s not much, but it’s one more draft pick than they had yesterday.
It took 26 games for Tatar to score his first goal in an Avalanche uniform. In 27 total games with the team, he picked up just nine points. This comes one year after scoring 20 goals and 48 points with the New Jersey Devils. That’s kind of what makes his struggles so surprising. The Devils aren’t exactly a slow team, and he seemed to fit in fine there. It just never worked out with Colorado. Best of luck to him in Seattle.
As for what’s next, Colorado seems intent on seeing what Ben Meyers can do on the wing, and Joel Kiviranta has earned a spot on the roster with his play. This move does free up cap space if the team wants to look outside the organization for help. We also know that Nikolai Kovalenko is set to come over when his KHL season ends. For the time being, we might see a handful players get looks in different spots.
Let the competition begin.
Stay tuned to CHN as more news comes in.
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