Mack will sign 5 years at 775K lmao

11 million for a 2C is nuts. Hopefully Newhook is ready to take over 2C by next year. Then you can spend more on wingers.

Meanwhile Tavares

He's not a 2C. He's a selke winning 90 point center. Roll Mackinnon and Barkov 20 minutes a night each and you win a tonne of games even with weak bottom 6 wingers.

I like the idea of the 1 - 2 punch but it wouldn't work with Barkov commanding that much AAV. If they could get him under 9.5 it'd make sense, that'd be difficult though.

Why wouldn't it work? Capwise Avs have flexibility. Johnson's $6m coming off the books in 2023 pays for Mackinnon's raise. Byram and Newhook can both be bridged. Toews (pending UFA) may be a cap casualty but by that stage Byram will be established and can be bridged. We will have Barron and Helleson on ELC's. Lot's of forward prospects in the system on ELC's who can fill in around elite centers. Compher's $3.5m can be spent much better an expires in 2023. Also bear in mind that the cap should rise by the time Mackinnon's new deal kicks in. Also, Barkov may be happy with $10m or so, in line with Point, Kucherov, etc who got $9.5m, and Eichel who got $10m.

he will re-sign in florida

I imagine he will want to but he'll also want to get paid and here's the problem for them: with that Bob contract weighing them down, they're going to have only $21M in space with 13 players signed. If Barkov gets what he deserves ($10-12M), that should leave them with about $10M to sign 6 more players. Keep in mind, that's with Huberdeau coming up the following year. Now, they could buy out the Bob contract but that would really, really hurt and probably not be a good move to have $5M in dead space for 8 more years and that would be on top of the $6.575M in dead space they're already carrying. They can always move out some contracts but that makes the team a lot worse which is less appealing for Barkov to stay.

Don't get me wrong, the Avs are in the same boat. Mac only has two years left on his current deal and is due for large raise. Many fans assume it will be really easy to get him re-signed because EJ's money comes off the books but if the team doesn't show progress towards getting out of the second round, him re-signing may not be a foregone conclusion. He wants to win a Cup but his next deal will cement the rest of his career so he wants to be in a place where they want to win and will do what it takes to do so. I don't know if Barkov thinks the same way but most pro athletes do (in addition to wanting to make as much money as possible during their career) so, if it looks like Florida isn't getting much closer to the Cup, he may decide to go elsewhere.

The cap space and money issues are very overblown... We have a few contracts expiring next year (Vatrano, Acciari, Nutivaara) which should be more than enough for Barkov to re-sign here
Plus we are going to have an influx of cheap ELC players since our farm system is very good (Denisenko, Lundell, Heponiemi, Noel, Ludvig, Gildon, Samoskevich, etc) and by the time we need to really pay all of these guys and our current ELC players like tippett and knight we will have likely bought out Bob (2024-25 would be the season to do this) and the Yandle buyout hit will be gone

Huberdeau might be a bit of a problem but I have faith in Zito to work something out

Well, every team hopes that their young guys can come in and be impactful so they can keep costs down and re-sign their stars. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I agree that they can probably make it work and that every team that has big stars has to do a lot of juggling and will always be up against the cap. Zito has done a great job, for sure, much better than what was happening before. Guess we'll see what Barkov wants to do sometime this season.

Colorado will have a TONNE of cap flexibility in 2022. Sakic can extend Mackinnon then to get a clear picture of the cap situation moving forwards. He can also try to extend Byram and Newhook like he did with Girard a year early. That offseason is set up for the Avs to be big players in UFA with Kadri, Burakovsky, Nichuskin, and Francouz all hitting UFA.

2022 is a great year to have that cap flexibility too given that there are so many star players hitting UFA (though some will be resigned before then), including Barkov, Hertl, Zibanejad, Couturier, Forsberg, Rakell, etc etc

Keep in mind that Barkov was a childhood Avs fan who grew up watching Sakic/Forsberg. He'll be well aware that a Mackinnon/Barkov duo back by a young cost-controlled core can do serious damage in the playoffs every single year they play together.

Instead, he could choose continue to play in a low pressure market, make more money than anywhere else, be the #1 center, and still contend for a cup

Colorado's cap situation is better than Florida, mostly due to Bobrovsky, so it's possible that he could get more money from Colorado than Florida. Denver is also a pretty low-pressure market but with a good fan base. The Avs are also set up to be perennial contenders as well, especially with him added.