NHL trade rumors: 5 teams who should trade for Darcy Kuemper

5. Colorado Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche are a great team who don’t have many holes to fill. Additionally, they could splurge if they wanted to, as they have over $20 million of cap space and no major RFAs or UFAs to re-sign. After re-signing guys like Andre Burakovsky, Ryan Graves, Valeri Nichushkin, and Tyson Jost, they’ll probably still have over $10 million to play with.

Now, I have no clue how bad the pandemic has hurt the Avalanche’s finances. It’s hurt a lot of teams, though. So maybe the Avalanche don’t want to spend to the cap. But they should consider it since they are very close to winning a Stanley Cup.

One of their very few holes is their goaltending. Philipp Grubauer has had trouble staying healthy and his injury against the Dallas Stars might well be why they’re likely going to lose to them in the second round. Pavel Francouz is a solid goalie, but he’s struggled against the Stars.

It wouldn’t be a huge surprise to me if they trade one of those goalies. If this happens, Kuemper would make a ton of sense for the Avalanche. He’s relatively cheap and he’s one of the best goalies in the world. The lone downside to trading for Kuemper is his contract doesn’t perfectly line up with Cale Makar’s entry-level contract, which expires after next season.

Colorado would have to get creative for Kuemper to make sense, but they’ve been aggressive in the past. Remember, they tried to sign John Tavares and Artemi Panarin in consecutive offseasons. I think if they make a splash, it’ll be at forward, but Kuemper is an undeniably plausible target for them.