Hey I've been saying he's been worth this since the start of the year
And people were thinking I was crazy
Looks like, I was correct

He was always a good player, just snake bitten for most of his career with the habs

As a Blues fan, he’s playing well honestly. Such a soft series overall tho both ways. Sucks to see Binnington go down, it almost makes the series less interesting going forward when you’re missing two starting defenseman and now the best goalie in the playoffs so far.

the guy could not finish a play for so many years though. im glad his scoring touch as gotten better.

Hardy fellow. Better than I expected

I thought it was an overpay at the time, but damn if he hasn’t been great. I think in the long run this ends up being a win win trade, Lehkonen will make it easier to part ways with Burakovsky (or leverage him into a team friendly deal) while adding tenacity and skill to the middle 6. Barron is going to be a very good top 4 maybe top pairing dman for a long time.

No reason to think this wasn't a good deal for the Avs. Lehky has been great and Barron and that 2nd weren't doing anything for the Avs this season.

Before the trade, everybody thought it was bad. Now they all wanna extend him.

He's so clutch, a real playoffs beast. Can't win without one of those in playoffs.

I mean, he’s an RFA? Of course people want to extend RFAs you paid a lot for. That’s the reason why his price was so high.

A lot of people trying to post “gotchas” in here. It can simultaneously be an overpay and a good fit. Avs overpaid for Kuemper last summer. He’s been exceptional, but it was still an overpay. C’est la vie.

I think most people here post "not to my team" comments. We've seen that alot with Chiarot, Lehkonen and even Pacioretty.

But when said player play a few games for his new team, all of a sudden he's good. Same thing will happen when Petry is traded.

I think most people here can't evaluate a player, so they will only repeat ignorant comments they saw in other posts.

I didn’t see this, so I’m late to reply here.

Seems like you missed the point. Someone can make a trade at market value and it can still be a bad trade. Chiarot got a big return, he also was arguably the worst defenseman for the Panthers. It was an overpay, ACGMs on here were right to say no.

Lehkonen is a better player, younger, and an RFA. It still was an overpay, but Avs fans are right to enjoy him while they have him.

Comparing the trades to Petry is also funny. Petry is 34 and signed for $6.25M for the next 3 years. The issue isn’t that he’s a bad player. The issue is that he’s overpaid and declining because he’s old. Not really a fair comparison.

I agree with you about Chiarot trade. That's gonna hurt his UFA value this summer.

Most Avs fans now say Lehkonen was worth the price.

I get that he's signed until he's 37, but how is he overpaid? He's a 40 points big fast top 4 RHD. Look at what Klinkberg will get this summer and tell me Petry is overpaid.

Also, how is declining? He was bad under Ducharme, but got back to being a 40 points defenseman under St-Louis.

Lehkonen is clutch

He’s declining because he’s entering his late 30s on a contract with term. Bouncing back for 30 games is great but you’re trading that contract until he’s 37. He’s not worth a premium return.

Klingberg will be 30 at the start of next season and yeah he’ll probably get overpaid too. Doesn’t make the Petry contract any better lol.

I think fast defenseman who doesn't play physical can play until their late 30s. See Letang, who is about to sign a 5 years 8M contract at 35 years old.

Petry will be just fine for the next 2-3 years. Maybe the last year will be meh, but it would still be worth trading for him.

If bouncing back 30 games doesn't make him good, how playing bad for 40 games makes him bad?

He's still the same 40+ points top 4 defenseman he was last year.