Adrian Dater
Philipp Grubauer is a Vezina Trophy finalist. He also allowed eight goals on the final 47 shots he saw in the playoffs and his team lost the final two games of the second round. He was probably the Colorado Avalanche’s best player in the first 62 games of their season, playoffs included. He had respective saves percentages of .857, .880 and .773 in the final three games of the Avs’ season, all losses.
So, what is Philipp Grubauer worth on his next contract, in which he enters as a potential unrestricted free agent?
Grubauer, 29, had a cap hit of $3,333,333 on his soon-to-expire deal. Starting July 28, he can be a UFA. What’s he worth?
It’s going to be tricky, but I’d say he would command about $6 million per on a new deal on the open market. Keep in mind, I’m saying on the open market. The first rule about the NHL is that there will ALWAYS be a team that overpays for a player on the open market. I don’t think the Avs want to even think about anything above $6 million on a new deal for Grubauer. But could they go that high to keep him? I think they probably would.
The Avs have done nothing, media-wise, since the abrupt end to their season 10 days ago. So, we have no fresh quotes from Joe Sakic about any of this thoughts/plans for the off-season, spending-wise. We know that the Avs have about $23 million in cap space, and need to give new contracts to two pretty big-name guys (Gabe Landeskog and Cale Makar). Grubauer is, unquestionably, the other big-name guy on Sakic’s to-sign list.
Assuming Landeskog and Makar are going to eat up at least $15 million of that $23 million, there is still room for Grubauer, but the Avs can’t go any higher than $6 million per probably. And, at that price, you have to seriously ask: is he worth it?
I gotta be honest, I was a bit stunned at how bad Grubauer looked in those final three games, after such a really fine season otherwise. That said, it wasn’t all his fault those last few games. He was good enough to have stolen Game 3 in Vegas, but his teammates couldn’t give him that one extra goal. But, starting with the third period of Game 5, let’s face it: he didn’t get the job done, either. He doesn’t get a free pass just because a couple guys turned the puck over at times.
It had seemed like Grubauer was a man really dialed in, that he was in the midst of a really special season. And then it just…fell apart.
So, what do you do if you’re the Avs? Do you invest in him longer-term? Or, do you say, “We’ll roll the dice with Pavel Francouz next year and another backup and let Grubauer walk if he wants something huge like $6-7 million per.” That Vezina Trophy finalist designation definitely helped his market value. Some desperate team out there would say, “Hey, we can add a Vezina finalist to our roster for nothing off our skin except some money.”
Then again, those last three games likely also hurt Grubauer’s market value. Yeah, the regular-season numbers were great, but a lot of hockey people are going to think, ‘Yeah, but can he win the really big ones? Hasn’t quite looked it so far. That was a really good team in front of him this year. A lot of goalies would have posted strong numbers.”
Three of the NHL’s top-five best-paid goalies are still playing right now, which says something about their worth. They are: Carey Price ($10.5 million), Andrei Vasilevskiy ($9.5 million) and Marc-Andre Fleury ($7 million). Then again, some other guys in the top 10 (Sergei Bobrovsky, $10 million), Jakob Markstrom ($6 million) are goalies that are albatrosses to their teams right now, cap-wise, performance-wise.
I think the Avs should, and will, make a very competitive offer to Philipp Grubauer to stay. That’s pretty much all they can do. If they want to overpay, well, there are risks involved. Just as there are great risks in letting him walk for nothing.
This will be up to Sakic and the Kroenkes. It should be interesting to see what happens.