Photo Credit: Matt Kartozian/USA TODAY Sports
The Colorado Avalanche are a tire fire, and it isn’t just their defensive performance this season.
A budget team in a soft marketplace, the Avalanche have struggled to retain top talent in recent years; losing Paul Stastny to unrestricted free agency and Ryan O’Reilly in a lopsided trade with the Buffalo Sabres following a protracted and contentious series of contract negotiations. 
Now Matt Duchene, a top-line point producer and one of the best pure skaters in the game, is the subject of trade speculation. And defenseman Tyson Barrie’s name is beginning to come up as well. Barrie is a Victoria-born defenseman and a right-handed shooter, who excels in transition. He’s signed through this year and will be a restricted free agent for several seasons thereafter. If Barrie begins to shake loose though, how interested should the Canucks be?
Let’s begin by recapping Barrie’s situation and why his name is being mentioned in trade rumblings. It started on Saturday when Elliotte Friedman dropped the high-scoring 24-year-olds name during a Headlines segment on Hockey Night in Canada.
“One other name in Colorado a lot of people are wondering about is Tyson Barrie,” Friedman said. “Tyson Barrie has arbitration rights at the end of this year, he’s a restricted free agent, and teams are waiting to see: “Does Colorado think they can sign this guy?
“If not, I think that’s a name you’re going to hear a lot out there because there’s a lot of interest,” Friedman concluded.
That’s a tepid sort of trade-block report. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but NHL teams are very interested in a high-scoring, young, right-handed shooting defenseman who has a few RFA years remaining, which can be used to keep his cap hit down on a longer-term contract. Well, paint me pink with a feather.
Friedman admitted that it’s premature to say that there’s any trade talks involving Barrie during a radio hit on Sportsnet 960 early this week (transcription courtesy Chris Nichols):
But one thing I kind of did realize was that if Colorado is going to trade somebody, the name that a lot of teams want to talk about is Tyson Barrie. Now I don’t think Colorado is there yet. But he’s a restricted free agent at the end of the season with arb rights, and some teams can see how this might end up being a problem for the Avalanche.
“So he’s the name to watch in the sense of how do their contract talks go with him. I don’t think they’ve gone very far, and if they don’t go well I could see Barrie being a guy that teams say, ‘Alright, what’s it going to take to do this.’
More than anything, I think, what Barrie’s name popping up in trade rumours indicates is that the Avalanche are an internal budget team that’s struggled to retain their top talent. That’s partly the result of ownership being a bit spendthrift, and partly a lack of prudent management. 
Barrie, for example, is on a two-year bridge contract (he’ll require an expensive $3.2 million qualifying offer this summer). Generally speaking, small-market teams that are able to retain their top talent do so by making big bets early on. As a textbook example, see how the Nashville Predators – learning from the situations that cost them the likes of Ryan Suter, Scott Hartnell and Kimmo Timonen – gambled long and early on Roman Josi. 
If the Avalanche had gone long on Barrie’s second deal, they would’ve had a favourable contract on the books long term. Instead, they have a situation being monitored as a potential headache by rival NHL teams. This is something of a repetitive problem for the Avalanche, although the organization did – to their credit – wisely avoid the issue with captain Gabriel Landeskog. 
Still, it’s the O’Reilly situation that sticks out in the mind here. The two-way ace was restricted ahead of the NHL lockout, and in contrast to how the Bruins locked up Tyler Seguin or how the Jets handled Evander Kane, the Avalanche didn’t make a deal with O’Reilly before the 2012-13 NHL lockout kicked in. 
That resulted in the Jay Feaster offer-sheet saga, which begat a cutback arbitration attempt in 2014, and finally, a few years later, the flat stone that started skipping on September 15, 2012, cost the Avalanche the player.
In Barrie’s case though, we should note that the Avalanche have a lot of time here. 
I’d think Barrie will probably file for player-elected salary arbitration this summer if an extension isn’t worked out before then. That’ll allow the Avalanche to elect a two-year term, which would give the two sides a tonne of time to work things out and make a favourable deal. 
For a team like the Avalanche, who are starved for blue-line talent, I’d think there’s no sense of urgency here. The worst case scenario for Colorado is that they go through a contentious arbitration process with Barrie and damage the relationship with a very good offensive defenseman. Even if all of that happens, the club will still likely have Barrie on the cheap for at least the next two years. 
So how closely should the Canucks be monitoring this situation? Very closely, obviously. 
The Avalanche have bled high-end talent in recent years, and if Barrie goes on the block, it would behoove the Canucks to be involved. We’re talking about a player who ranks seventh in the entire NHL in 5-on-5 point scoring among defensemen the past three years. The players ahead of him? Erik Karlsson, P.K. Subban, Victor Hedman, Roman Josi, Alex Pietrangelo, Duncan Keith. Barrie is also top-five in primary assist rate, usually a testament to how dynamic a defenseman is in transition.
And Barrie is very dynamic in transition. His ability to rush the puck, generate offense on in-zone play, and use his speed to put pressure on opposition defenders is unquestionably high end.
Now, it should be said that Barrie is not an elite power-play piece. He excels more in transition and at using his feet to keep defenders guessing, rather than in a stationary sort of attacking situation. He doesn’t really possess the big, heavy right-handed slap shot that we always discuss the Sedin twins requiring on Vancouver’s first power-play unit.
Still, we’re talking about a guy who has generated bona fide top-pairing two-way results for several years now and he’s also an elite offensive blue liner. Add young, right-handed, and B.C.-born into the equation, and you’ve absolutely got the sort of player the Canucks – and any other team, really – should be tracking closely if his contract negotiations end up becoming contentious this summer.
That there’s no real urgency for the Avalanche in dealing with Barrie might also work in Vancouver’s favour. Since the 2013 NHL Entry Draft, the Canucks have performed solidly at the draft table. Though the organization is committed to building from within, nailing draft picks also provides an NHL team with the currency to make a competitive trade pitch to a small-market club that seems unlikely to retain a blue-chip talent. 
Consider that O’Reilly cost the Sabres one high-end prospect (Nikita Zadorov), two solid ones (J.T. Compher and Mikhail Grigorenko) and a very high second-round pick. That’s kind of a lot. Vancouver’s prospect pipeline doesn’t have the sort of critical mass of assets where they might realistically stomach that sort of blow, but it could be by the time Barrie is on the block for real.
It’s simple really. Barrie is good enough to qualify as a ‘mortgage the farm’ type of piece, and he’s young enough that you might project him to still be in his prime by the time the Canucks are ready to seriously contend for a Stanley Cup again. 
If Barrie shakes loose over the next 12 to 18 months, Vancouver would be well advised to get heavily involved.