NHL Trade Rumors: Avalanche don’t plan on trading Nathan MacKinnon
The Colorado Avalanche have no plans to trade Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, or Tyson Jost.
While the Colorado Avalanche are open for business as sellers, every team has its limit. Not everyone on the team is on the market. For the Avalanche, there are likely very few players who are untouchable. You can count Nathan MacKinnon among them, as well as Mikko Rantanen and Tyson Jost, their past two first round picks.
Colorado general manager Joe Sakic has a number of decisions to make regarding trades before the NHL trade deadline, but his mind appears made up regarding that young trio in comments made to the Denver Post.
“Well, I don’t plan on moving a guy like MacKinnon, (Tyson) Jost, (Mikko) Rantanen, especially with their age,” general manager Joe Sakic said, via the Denver Post. “We have a lot of good pieces here. Will I be listening to different ideas on how to improve us and maybe get us younger and get more depth here? Yeah, we’re going to do that.”
Trading their top young players makes no sense for the Avalanche. Sure, Matt Duchene and Gabriel Landeskog are both fair game. At least one of them will be traded and don’t count out both being gone by the trade deadline. But trading a young star like MacKinnon makes very little sense unless you get a giant return. Even then, if Colorado trades him, it would be next to impossible to get anything close to fair value.
While trading Duchene and Landeskog will be very difficult, it’s necessary. Whether it’s their fault or not, the core hasn’t had success with them leading the way. For a true rebuild to happen, Duchene has to be traded. Landeskog has a long enough contract that he could feasibly be a part of the next great Avalanche team. But Colorado should certainly be open to trading him as well.
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Rantanen has been very encouraging for the Avalanche this season with 18 points in 34 games, proving he’s a future building block. Jost has been excelling at University of North Dakota with 20 points in 18 games.