If you’re a fan of the Colorado Avalanche, this is a story that should feel eerily familiar, and frankly, a little nauseating. The shockwaves from Kirill Kaprizov’s record-setting contract are being felt league-wide, but they’re hitting particularly close to home in Denver. The issue at hand is the future of star center Martin Necas, and the situation is quickly becoming a high-stakes game of financial chicken that the Avs can’t afford to lose a second time.
The Rising Price of Stardom for Martin Necas
Let’s be clear: Martin Necas has played himself into a massive payday. After coming over from Carolina, he exploded, posting 83 points in 79 games. He’s big, he’s fast, and he produces. Players like that don’t come cheap, and as insider Frank Seravalli correctly pointed out, if Necas repeats that performance this season, his next contract won’t just start with an eight-figure number—it will be well north of $10 million AAV. The market dictates the price, and the top-end market just went through the roof.
This is where the ghost of Mikko Rantanen looms large. The Avalanche were in this exact same position last year, played hardball, and watched one of their elite talents get shipped out, only to sign a massive $12 million AAV deal with the Dallas Stars. It was an unmitigated disaster for the organization. Now, they face the same nightmare scenario. Can they justify paying Necas, say, $10.5 million when they could have potentially retained Rantanen for just a million or two more? From a pure asset management perspective, the value gap between those two players is wider than the salary gap would suggest.
The writing on the wall is clear. With cornerstone players already on massive tickets, the Colorado Avalanche front office is in a serious bind. They are staring at a situation where they may have to trade Martin Necas simply because they cannot accommodate his deserved salary. Letting another point-per-game superstar walk out the door would be a catastrophic failure. A trade might be the only painful, but necessary, solution to avoid history repeating itself.
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