11:29 a.m.: Blackwood has put pen to paper on a five-year deal, the team announced. The contract carries a $5.25MM cap hit for a total value of $26.25MM, according to Friedman. His deal will be split evenly year-to-year including a $1MM signing bonus in 2026-27, and he has a six-team no-trade clause throughout, PuckPedia adds.
10:08 a.m.: The Avalanche are nearing an agreement on a contract extension with pending unrestricted free agent netminder Mackenzie Blackwood, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports Friday.
Blackwood, 28, had rediscovered his game as a legitimate tandem/1A option with the Sharks over the past couple of seasons. He was open to sticking around in San Jose. Still, with the rebuilding club needing to keep their long-term future open for top prospect Yaroslav Askarov, they opted not to engage in extension talks and instead traded him to the Avs earlier this month. Colorado needed a more stable solution between the pipes with both halves of their opening-night tandem in Alexandar Georgiev and Justus Annunen struggling. So far, Blackwood has provided that. Along with veteran trade pickup Scott Wedgewood from Nashville, they’ve put up save percentages north of .930 in their nine combined starts since being acquired.
Those strong early returns, plus a burgeoning track record behind a thin defense in San Jose, make Blackwood a clear fit in Denver past this season. A few years ago, he was one of the more intriguing young netminders in the league, posting a .915 SV% and 2.77 GAA in 43 starts and four relief appearances with the Devils in 2019-20 while finishing sixth in Calder Trophy voting.
He hasn’t posted above-average numbers since but is on pace to do so this season, logging a .913 SV%, 2.83 GAA, and one shutout in 21 starts and two relief appearances split between the Sharks and Avalanche. He’s stopped nine goals above average and 5.9 above expected, per MoneyPuck, squarely positioning him as a top-20 netminder in the league this season. Twelve out of his 21 starts have been quality ones (SV% above league average).
Blackwood has allowed exactly two goals in all four of his starts for Colorado thus far, allowing eight on 116 shots faced over the past couple of weeks. The Avs’ high-powered offense has given him necessary goal support, leading to a 3-1-0 record to begin what now will be a multi-year run in the Central Division. Whatever his new deal is, it’ll come with a significant raise on his current $2.35MM cap hit as afforded by the two-year, $4.7MM pact he signed with the Sharks in 2022.
Keeping Blackwood around became especially important when Colorado traded one of their higher-ceiling young options in Annunen to the Predators in the Wedgewood deal. That’s not to say Colorado’s prospect pool between the pipes is completely barren. There’s 2024 second-round pick Ilya Nabokov, who’s coming off a Gagarin Cup championship in the Kontinental Hockey League with Metallurg Magnitogorsk, and Pavel Lysenkov of Match TV said Thursday that he won’t re-sign in Russia and will ink an entry-level deal with the Avs for next season. There’s also 23-year-old Trent Miner, who has a .901 SV% in 14 AHL games this season and stopped 12 of the 13 shots he faced against the Capitals in his NHL debut last month.
Regardless, Blackwood figures to be the Avs’ Game 1 starter in the playoffs, assuming they stick around for an eighth consecutive postseason berth. Whatever extension he signs will walk him to unrestricted free agency at its conclusion.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
I don’t look at Blackwood’s history and see a goalie worthy of a big-$$$ extension.
Last summer Avs management told us Landeskog will be back in the lineup sometime in December, Currently his timetable return has gone silent. Bottom line, Landeskog is finished.
GMs are so easy to bite… great that he’s reverted back to form because it’s so rare they re-revert out of it, right?
5 years???? He’s playing good now, but holy crap man. That term is WILD. I’d rather pay someone with Blackwood’s record an overpayment for 2 years than a market value for 5.
Newsflash!!!
When Blackwood’s extension is over he will become a free agent … That is all …
that’s not news, that’s commonsense
Common sense is not so common…
Terrible business decision by MacFarland.
This smacks of the Georgie Dog all over again.
Lol
This is good for everyone else
Holy overpay, considering his history. Def should have received a shorter-term prove-yourself deal. Sure, he’s looked great this year, but had been very inconsistent throughout his career.
This contract will not age well for sure. One bad stretch and it’s an albatross.
I know a Joonas Korpisalo contract when I see one
Bad decision , makes no sense to jump in and tie him up to a bad contract like this. His best year multiplied by 5 doesn’t warrant this warrant this payday for 5 years.
Insanity.
Have any of these multi-year deals in the $5M range for tandem/backup goalies EVER worked out?
There are five goalies in the world worth committing to for the next five years, only a few that you can predictably expect to be performing at a good level in 2030. He’s not one.
Isn’t that basically the Jarry deal?
I guess that’s the going rate for volatile goalies these days?
Solid one day, AHL reject the next, then kinda OK again = $5.25 to 5.375 million per?
Lot of arm chair GM’s on this board really hating on this extension. Last I checked $5.25M is still less than Poo-bauer is making and same contract that Keumper received at a much younger age. He will be the 17th highest paid goalie next season. That is league average. Georgiev is a less than average goalie and won 40 games for the Avs the same team. That’s also less than half of what Igor will be making. He looked overpaid tonight with his 30+ saves against Utah.