Morning Flurries: Depth moves and a short summer ahead for the Colorado Avalanche

Now that August is officially upon us the news will become much more of a slow crawl until training camp begins in just six short weeks. The Colorado Avalanche are still making minor transactions to get their roster completely ready for the 2021-22 season.

The 2021-22 Avalanche roster might be complete after the announced signing of defenseman Ryan Murray to a modest one-year $2 million contract. Joe Sakic did a good job to patiently work the market and find quality depth willing to come to Colorado on a short term deal.

Another depth signing occurred over the weekend with a two-way contract for Jordan Gross. The right handed defenseman spent most of the season on the Arizona Coyotes’ taxi squad but he got in seven games over the year. As the Avalanche like to do with their older experienced depth finds they will likely turn to Gross when injuries strike the back end.

One piece of business that the Avalanche have yet to wrap up is getting another depth defenseman in Dennis Gilbert under contract. After receiving his qualifying offer a week ago Gilbert has now filed for arbitration and a hearing will soon be scheduled for this month assuming it gets that far. Considering Gilbert does not have much NHL experience this measure is just likely a formality to increase the minor league portion of his pay on a two-way contract.

Over at The Athletic, some reactions from the Makar family after Cale’s younger brother Taylor was selected by the Avalanche at 220thvoverall in the just completed 2021 NHL Entry draft. It was an even bigger celebration for the family as Cale had just signed a six-year $54 million contract extension that morning.

A bit of humor ensued as it was announced the Seattle Kraken botched new goaltender Philipp Grubauer’s contract and had to be resubmitted to the league with proper salary cap procedures in place to account for variance in per year salary.