Report: Avs-Bruins talks continue, may center on Brandon Carlo

One of the less-heralded subplots to emerge from yesterday’s free agent frenzy was the Colorado Avalanche resuming their search to unload Matt Duchene.

The Avs, of course, have been rumored to be ready to deal Duchene for the better part of a year now. The Bruins were reportedly involved in both a Duchene deal and one for Gabriel Landeskog, but obviously neither ever materialized.

There were reports last month that the talks were ongoing, but things kicked back into high gear yesterday as the Avs were reportedly talking to a number of teams, most notably the Columbus Blue Jackets and Nashville Predators.

The Bruins were also involved.

From Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch, who has been all over this due to the CBJ angle:

As you can see, Joe Sakic’s ask for Duchene is still pretty high. It’s long been assumed that Carlo would have to be the centerpiece for any Duchene trade, and while Portzline is also “assuming” above, the assumptions of a guy as plugged in as Portzline are pretty safe bets.

The Bruins have somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-13 million in cap space available, depending on the size of their roster. Duchene’s cap hit is $6 million, and he’s signed through 2018-2019.

There are a number of problems here:

• Duchene’s contract would take up almost half of the Bruins’ available space, and that doesn’t include a new contract for David Pastrnak or any of the restricted free agents.
• It’d be hard to swallow giving up on a young player like Brandon Carlo for what could end up being just two seasons of Duchene.
• The Avs are rebuilding and trying to go young. The Bruins would need to convince them to take on salary to make this work, but why would Colorado want to do that?

The other main problem is whether or not it’s a good idea to let Carlo go.

He had his ups and downs in his rookie season, but showed great talent and promise, especially when considering his age.

However, one could see the Bruins making the argument that Charlie McAvoy could fill Carlo’s role, and that McAvoy’s (potential) emergence coupled with the positive impact of Duchene would be enough to blunt the loss of Carlo.

I’m of the opinion that adding Duchene doesn’t really make the Bruins true Stanley Cup contenders, and that losing Carlo for two years of Duchene is a bad move.

What do you think?