I appreciate you trying to think this through from the Avs' perspective but you're off on a few counts. 1st, before he was injured Zadorov had made his way to the top of the depth chart and was succeeding with top pairing matchups and minutes. Unless the Avs land a big fish in a Duchene trade, that's where Avs fans expect to see him again (paired with Johnson) in the fall. Beyond that the Avs will have between 1-3 of Lindholm, Mironov or Bigras on the roster as well.

Now onto your trade, the reason people are adding 1st round picks to the deal is because A) yes the Avs absolutely want and need them as they rebuild and B) it takes giving up value to get value. You haven't really given the Avalanche anything of value in this trade, but instead tossed a handful of "meh" prospects at them in a quantity over quality trade. Considering some of the other teams interested in Duchene and the young D men they can contribute to a trade, a deal like this won't be a competitive offer for CBJ.

First on Zadorov, he was thrusted into that role because they had no one else on the team to play those minutes. If the Avs had another option I am sure they would have used it.

Now, as far as the trade, it is very possible. Bednar is the coach. Remember he came from the Jackets farm system. One thing has been proven time and time again to work. If you want to win you build from the blue line out. Murray is better than most people think. Murray is a victim of bad timing. He was all set to play with Jones this year on the first line but then Werenski happened. Torts wanted to put him on the second pairing but Jack Johnson cannot play with anyone other than Savard. It also happened that pair became our best shutdown pairing and one of the best in the league. Murray had to now play the third pair. Which meant his ice time dropped and he played with raw and less experienced players most of the time.

Murray is capable of big minutes. Everyone underestimates how good he is. Strong skater, makes very good first passes out of the zone, and can play big minutes.

The next thing they need is depth. As you stated they do have some players developing but all of them are inexperienced at the NHL level.

It's funny to me how HARD CBJ fans try and push this narrative about how good Murray is while constantly trying to get rid of him in every trade. The truth is, he's just not special. He's an average to below average guy and every metric we have for measuring him agrees with that assessment. Your read on Zadorov is wrong, the team has been grooming Zadorov for that role since acquiring him and acquired him with the hopes of playing him in a top 2 or top 4 role long term.

"Big minutes" Ryan Murray