Grading the Kurtis MacDermid trade by the Colorado Avalanche

After trading forward Kurtis MacDermid to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for forward Zakhar Bardakov and a seventh-round draft pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, the Colorado Avalanche are now in need of an enforcer. The team now has $2,229,257 in cap space available as the trade frees up $987,500.

Ultimately, this action was taken to clear a small amount of cap space. Due to his current KHL play, Bardakov will not count toward the Avalanche’s cap number. After his time in the KHL is over, I believe he will join the Colorado Eagles.

The move to trade MacDermid was smart because he was eating up just a few minutes per game, and while he was doing his job of being an enforcer—the “bully” of the offense, if you will—it appears the Colorado Avalanche want to add more production in the offensive scoring department. MacDermid had two goals for the Avs this season and five goals in total over three years.

It is hard to grade the return of this trade, given that Bardakov has zero NHL experience, but getting a player and a draft pick for a guy who didn’t do much on the team is pretty awesome.

MacDermid averaged a time on ice of 5:05 for the Avalanche this season, which was the shortest amount of time on ice on the entire team.

I would fully expect the Colorado Avalanche to make some additional moves before the trade deadline, which is on Friday, March 8th, exactly a week from today. We should expect the team to look towards adding a cheap forward and a cheap goaltender (perhaps) unless they like what they saw from Justus Annunen on Thursday evening. Unfortunately, they are pretty tight against the cap right now, so I would imagine that MacDermid wouldn’t be the only player moved before the 8th.

I have wondered if Ryan Johansen has done enough as of late to justify keeping him on the roster, but it would not surprise me if he was one player included in a trade. He has a cap hit of $8 million in 2023-24 and the same for 2024-25, with the Avalanche only being responsible for $4 million in each of those years—Nashville took on the other $4 million.