The Avalanche made another trade on Thursday, leading up to Friday’s deadline, acquiring 29-year old center Nicolas Roy from the Toronto Maple Leafs. In exchange, the Avs sent a conditional 2027 1st round pick and a conditional 2028 5th round pick to the Leafs.

Roy was acquired buy Toronto this past summer from the Vegas Golden Knights for Mitch Marner. He was a key piece to many playoff teams in Vegas, including their 2023 Stanley Cup Championship.

The Maple Leafs thought they were getting a decent piece back from the Mitch Marner trade, but Roy did not look like the same player in his 59 games with Toronto. After scoring double digit goals in four straight seasons in Vegas, Roy only had only scored 5 in Toronto this season.

Hopefully it was just the sign of a pretty bad hockey team up there in Toronto and Roy will fit in much better here in Colorado. He is likely going to slot in as the 3rd line center, sliding Jack Drury down to the 4th line center slot — for now.

There could still be some moves in play for the Avs before tomorrow’s 1:00 PM deadline. There are rumors swirling that Jack Drury has not been interested in signing a contract extension with the Avs, signaling that he could be part of a trade. With that, Roy might actually be looked at as the 4C and Colorado could still be in the 3C market. We will have to wait and see. It would be pretty strange to see the Avs open up all of this cap space recently and not add anything real significant for the Cup run.