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Beauchemin will be bought out
June 15, 2017, 2:38 PM ET [14 Comments]
Rick Sadowski
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Farewell, Francois Beauchemin.

The Avalanche on Thursday announced that they have elected to buy out the final year of the 37-year-old defenseman's three-year contract, which will make him an unrestricted free agent.

It's a significant move in that they won't have to protect him for the upcoming expansion draft to stock the Vegas Golden Knights.

The Avalanche would have had to protect him because he had a no-movement clause in his contract, one of the expansion draft rules set forth by the NHL.

The $4.5 million remaining on Beauchemin's contract will still count toward the team's salary cap because he was 35 when he signed a three-year, $13.5 million deal on July 1, 2015. But the Avalanche will only have to pay him two-thirds of that over two years, $3 million total.

Now, they can choose to protect seven forwards, three defensemen and one goalie (the other option is eight skaters and one goalie), meaning Tyson Barrie, Erik Johnson and Nikita Zadorov will be safe along with a useful forward such as Sven Andrighetto, 24, Mikhail Grigorenko, 23, or Matt Nieto, 24.

I suppose the route they take will depend on their opinion of defenseman Mark Barberio, 27, who played pretty well in 34 games with Colorado (two goals, seven assists) after he was claimed on waivers from Montreal.

Teams have to submit their protected lists to the NHL on Saturday, and they'll be released to the public Sunday. Vegas will submit its list (one player per team) June 21, and the names will be announced that night as part of the NHL awards ceremony.

General manager Joe Sakic has said he wants the Avalanche to get younger and faster, so buying out Beauchemin certainly fits into that agenda.

Beauchemin, who was an alternate captain this past season, struggled while logging 21:30 in ice time, third on the team behind Barrie (23:18) and Johnson (22:04). Beauchemin and Barrie really shouldn't have had that kind of workload, but they played more minutes when Johnson missed 36 games because of a broken leg.

Beauchemin had 18 points (five goals, 13 assists) in 81 games and was a minus-14; he sure seemed to play a lot worse than that, but 11 players had even higher plus/minus figures (Barrie and Matt Duchene each finished minus-34).

Beauchemin played well his first season in Colorado after leaving Anaheim as a free agent (the Ducks balked at giving him a third year), but his play began to fall off the second half of 2015-16.

He ended with 52 points (13 goals, 39 assists) in 163 games with the Avalanche.

Selected by Montreal in the third round (No. 75) in the 1998 NHL draft, Beauchemin played eight seasons with Anaheim and won the Stanley Cup with the Ducks in 2007. He spent two years with Toronto and parts of a season with the Canadiens and Columbus.

Beauchemin has 271 points (73 goals, 198 assists) in 836 NHL games.