Is Neal Pionk a better hockey player than Samuel Girard?
There couldn’t have been many Colorado Avalanche fans who thought so last year, when their team was carving up the Winnipeg Jets in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Pionk did have a nice year for the Jets this season.
For the second time in three seasons, the puck went in a little more for him than expected. Pionk is a smidge bigger than Girard, but not by a lot. Their production at even strength has been about the same for a while, though Pionk has played a little more over the past three seasons.
Pionk plays on Winnipeg’s second pairing, but is nominally the club’s No. 2 defenseman because he gets more power-play time than Dylan DeMelo and sees the ice regularly in overtime.
Maybe some people would trade Girard for Pionk straight up if finances were not an issue and see it as a slight improvement for the Avs next season. Maybe not.
Here’s the point: Pionk just signed a new contract with the Jets in April. He’s going to cost $7 million against the salary cap for the next six seasons, the last of which he will be 35 years old.
Now, about that trade …
The Avs are always scrambling a bit with salary cap compliance. It’s life as a franchise that begins every season with a Cup-or-bust goal and a roster filled with good players.
One player who often comes up as a potential trade candidate is Girard. He’s stuck behind Cale Makar and Devon Toews, so he never really gets to show his full potential on the power play. He and Makar are both small relative to league standards, so pairing them together doesn’t happen very often.
If the backup quarterback is the most over-appreciated athlete in every sports town, the No. 3 defenseman is often the most under-appreciated. Girard’s size, and the idea that Colorado is a small-ish team that needs more grit and defensive aptitude in the playoffs, also lead people back to him as a trade candidate.
Send him somewhere where he’ll get more power-play time, and that team will give the Avs something nice and shiny in return. Sounds simple, right? It’s an idea that’s been floated around these parts for a long time.
One issue with this idea? Girard is quite good at hockey. He is part of why the Avs are such a good offensive team, and he’s a better defender than he’s given credit for.
Another issue is the contract. Well, not his contract. At $5 million for two more seasons, a No. 3 defenseman who helps generate 5-on-5 offense and is a secondary helper on both special teams is a team-friendly pact.
For a team like the Avs — up against the cap and often looking to squeeze extra value out of its roster — trading a No. 3 defenseman on a team-friendly deal is a tough ask. Replacing him with a No. 3 guy of equal or better on-ice value could be cost-prohibitive.
The salary cap ceiling is finally going up in the NHL. And it will be way up relative to where it’s been for the past half decade.
Pionk wasn’t a $7 million defenseman last season. But next year, when the cap increases to $95.5 million, or keeps rising to $113.5 million in year three of his deal? Yeah, that number makes more sense.
Six veteran NHL defensemen have signed new contracts since late January. The NHL officially announced its projected cap increases on Jan. 31, but everyone in the league knew big numbers were coming before that.
Here is a look at those six players, compared to Girard over the past three seasons:
| Player | Age | Games | ES Goals | ES Points | TOI/G | GAR | ’25-26 cap hit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Girard | 27 | 208 | 11 | 68 | 20:40 | 13 | $5.0M |
| Neil Pionk | 29 | 233 | 19 | 80 | 21:35 | 1.1 | $7.0M |
| Jakob Chychrun | 27 | 204 | 27 | 82 | 21:59 | 21.6 | $9.0M |
| Olli Maata | 30 | 227 | 12 | 59 | 18:09 | 16.5 | $3.5M |
| Marcus Pettersson | 29 | 228 | 9 | 82 | 21:43 | 41.7 | $5.5M |
| William Borgen | 28 | 248 | 10 | 59 | 17:01 | 9.9 | $4.1M |
Key: ES goals/points = even strength; TOI/G = time on ice per game; GAR = goals above replacement, courtesy of Evolving Hockey; Click here to view chart in mobile
Chychrun had a huge offensive season with the Capitals and will now cost the same for the next two seasons as Makar. Neither Maata nor Borgen should be in the second pairing for an upper-echelon NHL team.
If someone wanted to trade Girard and replace him with Marcus Pettersson, that wouldn’t have been a terrible idea. Pettersson is big and a bit underrated offensively. The Canucks just signed him through his age-34 season at $5.5 million per, though. That deal is probably going to look pretty good in a year or two.
There aren’t going to be a lot of players like Pettersson available, and most of them are going to cost a lot more. Three left-handed defensemen are pending unrestricted free agents that could *maybe* fit as a No. 3 guy on a contender.
Vladislav Gavrikov is the best of the lot. He’s a fine defense-first player in the mold of Jaccob Slavin. AFP Analytics, which does NHL contract projections, has Gavrikov’s next deal at seven years and more than $7.6 million per season. Ivan Provorov, who has played lots on bad teams but might not even be an upgrade over Girard? Six years, a little more than $7 million each.
Dmitri Orlov, who just had a rough time trying to handle the Florida Panthers? His projected AAV checks in at almost $6 million.
Here’s the bottom line: It would be harder than fans think for the Avs to replace Girard. Not just because he’s a good player, but his contract was signed in a pre-cap spike world.
Those contracts are going to be even more valuable in the next couple of seasons. This isn’t just about Girard, either.
Pick another veteran outside the inner-circle core. Artturi Lehkonen? Valeri Nichushkin? Josh Manson?
They’re all signed to contracts that are very favorable to the Avs, given their production and value. Trying to replace any of them with a player of similar talent and value at a similar cost would be very difficult.
It will be next to impossible to do it in the free-agent market, because lots of teams now have lots of cap space. And while the Avs have made some nice trades in recent years, they are short on draft and prospect equity. So trading one of the players we’ve mentioned to fill a hole is one thing, but then making a second swap to replace the guy just shipped out will be hard as well.
Financially speaking, the Avs are stuck. It’s not as bad as that word suggests. When all of those players are healthy, the Avs are still an excellent hockey team. It’s a first-world problem by NHL standards.
Maybe there is a trade or under-the-radar signing or two to be made that will make the Avs a better playoff team. It’s not going to be easy to find, though.
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