Frankly, I was expecting one of those Avalanche blockbuster deals. You know, like six years and $24 million for 39-year-old Dwayne Roloson or something.
Hey, it might have gotten people off Darcy Tucker’s back for a while.
Instead, we get two years and a modest $3.6 million for goalie Craig Anderson, which is the proverbial good news and bad.
Good because it means that in the transfer of front office power from one accountant to another, somebody actually took a look at all those bad contracts and decided not to add to the pile.
Bad because it means the Avalanche isn’t good enough for a proven NHL starting goal- tender. At 28, Anderson may be ready to emerge as that guy, which would graduate the signing from good to great, but the reason he comes relatively cheap is that he hasn’t yet.
This was mostly a welcome recognition of reality.
On a last-place team with eight players not named Joe Sakic making $3 million or more, now is the time to shed big contracts, not write more. Once Swedish prospect Jonas Gustavsson signaled the Avs were not in his plans, Anderson was the best they could do.
At last, management seems aware it has undertaken a rebuilding project. Expensive free-agent deals for Ryan Smyth, Scott Hannan and Tucker were supposed to provide some kind of bridge from the old Avalanche to the new. Instead, they became Colorado’s own bridge to nowhere.
Belatedly, management is open to shedding some of these deals. Unfortunately, it waited too long. This is a stunningly bad time to offload big contracts. So the best new general manager Greg Sherman may be able to do is not add any.
Other than Gustavsson, Anderson was probably the best prospective starting goaltender on the market. And, remarkably, he was a goaltender who really wanted to play for the Avs. It turns out that Dollar Bill Wirtz’s refusal to put the Blackhawks on local TV in Chicago is still helping rivals after his death.
Although Anderson was born and raised in Park Ridge, Ill., his fascination as a kid was not with the invisible Blackhawks, who drafted him anyway. Instead, like most every other juvenile goaltender of the time, he was drawn to Patrick Roy, and thus became an Avalanche fan.
His game log from last season, when he backed up Tomas Vokoun in Florida, looks a little like an EKG readout. Playing consecutive games on a western trip in December, he shut out Edmonton and surrendered five goals to Vancouver. In the space of five nights in February, he gave up six goals at Boston, one at Madison Square Garden and seven at the Meadowlands.
“I think overall it was a pretty consistent year,” Anderson said. “I think I averaged 35-plus shots a night. I think I gave the team a chance to win every night.
“I remember a couple of those games where we got beat up pretty good by Boston and New Jersey, but I ended up playing right after that and bouncing back with a pretty good game against the Rangers, if I recall. So a lot of it is after a bad game how you respond and get back on track. My goal is obviously for consistency to give the team a chance to win every night that I play.”
As Anderson pointed out a couple of times in a conference call with reporters, we don’t really know who will start in net for most of the games next season. Avs fans hope it is Anderson because their most recent memory of the returning Peter Budaj is not good.
But you never know with goaltenders. Budaj could start off hot. To the extent that goaltending statistics are helpful, which is very small, their career numbers are pretty close — 2.87 goals allowed and a .911 save percentage for Anderson; 2.75 and .902 for Budaj.
Anderson was better last season, when his most impressive number was his record: 15-7-5. Budaj was 20-29-5, although it’s not fair to blame all the Avs’ many failings on him.
The bottom line is the Avalanche is back to two aspiring backups trying to mind the net Roy once filled, just as was the case a year ago with Budaj and Andrew Raycroft. Adding an established, expensive goalie to this rebuilding project would be like putting a Rolls Royce grille on a Volkswagen. Which VW did, of course.
In another year or two, the Avs may be ready to invest in a proven goaltender. In another year or two, if they’re lucky, Anderson might be that goaltender. Either way, they’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.
Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297 or dkrieger@denverpost.com
