I know it says "Final Thoughts", but I'll post more tonight if something major happens. Any who, here are a collaboration of my thoughts and predictions about what will happen tomorrow:- Tyler Arnason, Ben Guite, Ian Laperriere, and Andrew Raycroft will not be offered contracts, the Denver Post reports. I think Guite should have been retained, but I won't lose sleep over it. As for the other three, nothing too shocking.
- Colorado needs to sign at least one center tomorrow; even more so now that Guite is no longer a part of the team. Another checking line option is Marcel Goc; TSN reports he didn't receive a qualifying offer from the Sharks, and will hit the free agent market. Goc, a former 1st round draft pick of the Sharks, has almost no offensive upside (11 points in 55 games), but is great defensively and sported a 58.2 faceoff percentage this year. And if you think faceoffs don't matter all that much, consider this: the top two faceoff teams in the league last season were Detroit (55.1%) and San Jose (53.8%). The bottom two were Phoenix (44.8%) and the New York Islanders (45.7%). Colorado was not far behind with the fourth worst faceoff winning percentage (47.8) in the NHL (tied with Dallas).
- Jonas "The Monster" Gustavsson won't make his decision until after tomorrow, TSN reports. At this point, scratch Colorado off his list. Aside from Edmonton, there are no other NHL teams with vacant goalie spots; yet, there are at least 5 free agent goalies (Khabibulin, Roloson, Biron, Anderson, Conklin) looking to be NHL starters somewhere. 5 =/= 2. Hopefully the competition between the goalies will lead to pay deduction.
- In other goalie news, the Edmonton Journal reports Marty Biron and Dwayne Roloson, both players who share the same agent, will be lobbying for the starting job in Colorado tomorrow. As long as the Avs don't sign Ty Conklin or Manny Legace as the starter, I should be fine.
- David Jones and Kyle Cumiskey were offered qualifying offers by the Avs. No mention of Michael Vernace, which is unsettling.
- For those of you living in a cave, Scott Gomez (+ prospects Pyatt and Busto) was traded to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Chris Higgins and Doug Janik (+ prospects Valentenko and McDonagh). Habs needed a center, but this is a bad deal. Not only do they pick up Gomez's horrid contract, but they give up the best prospect (Ryan McDonagh) in the deal. Now that the Rangers have some free cap space, expect them to sign some more players to horrible contracts (or trade for Heatley).
- I don't think Colorado will be able to sign a top 6 forward this summer based on lack of money, and the strong possibility that Duchene and/or Sakic will be on the roster this fall. That said, don't be surprised to see Colorado sign Chris Neil. Just a hunch; let's all hope I'm wrong. I know it makes no sense to sign a RW, but how much sense did it make to sign Darcy Tucker last year?
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