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Sean Walker and a 2026 fifth rounder head to Colorado for Ryan Johansen and a 2025 1st round pick (top 10 protected).

Casey Mittelstadt heads to Colorado for Bowen Byram. The deal is one for one.

Avs address two vital needs...remains to be seen if they stay the course in goal.

This is Sakic's world and we're just living in it. Absolute baller moves by the best hockey mind in the biz.

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Technically it's Chris MacFarland making the moves but yeah, Sakic is still in the damn room in the "Jim Rutherford" chair.

Sounds like Torts and the Flyers want nothing to do with Johansen either. Immediately put on waivers.

Here's the crazy part--the Avs actually CLEARED cap room with these moves. They now have roughly $4.9 million counting all the LTIR room they have.

Can someone explain these moves to me? I know nothing about Sean Walker, Byram is still only 22. Mittelstadt coming into his own now after a slow start?

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Thanks Chuck, E.L. and Harmy!

I like this...the Avs were never going to be able to hold onto Byram anyway on his next contract. Mittelstadt is young and fills a void.

Ouch that is ugly Johansen being put on waivers immediately....only thing worse is going to rehab and then getting waived. From Stanely Cup contender to out of work.

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No AI has been used in the making of this post

Walker is a right-shot, mobile defenseman who can move the puck, but I think the key here is that he's good on the penalty kill. It gives them another legit weapon on the back end, a defense that IIRC already leads the league in scoring. But anything that helps limit Makar's minutes and hopefully takes him off the PK completely would be huge. This also conceivably bumps down Manson to the third pairing where he kinda belongs.

Byram is only 22 yes, but two huge concerns surround him. One is obvious, the kid is insanely injury prone, having gone through two major concussions (I still say FUCK YOU to Bo Horvat, I haven't forgotten that chicken wing hit from a few years back) and a lower-body injury that had him miss a majority of last year. Two, someone on HF said that he's gearing up to be Matt Dumba 2.0, and I think that's a fair assessment given what we've seen. He's managed to stay mostly healthy this year but he's had an absolutely disastrous year so far. Makes bad reads and jumps at the worst possible time, doesn't really have an elite shot or finishing ability, so he can't quite rack up the goals and points, and this year he's been losing way too many puck battles and made really bad, soft coverages. He needs to go back to the snot-nosed punk he was at the start of his career who didn't back down to anyone. I swear if I didn't know any better I'd say he's been a little reluctant physically, which would be understandable given his injury history.

All in all, Bo's a good kid with a ton of personality, so I'm hoping he figures it out in Buffalo. The skating, hockey sense, and talent are all there...he just needs to decide what kind of player he wants to be. If he wants to be a very solid two-way defenseman with a little more defense and a little less flash, he's set. If he wants to be a very flashy Cale Makar-type who regularly jumps into the play...well, I think that would be a mistake. Avs fans have exaggerated to the point of mythologizing his performance in the 2022 playoffs, but he was inarguably a fantastic fill-in for the injured Sammy Girard. When he was on the ice the Avs controlled like 60% of play or something, and that included the Oilers sweep where he found himself on the ice with McDavid and Draisaitl a lot of times.