Trade Barrie!

Throughout the years one of my hobbies has been to pay attention to the Avalanche fans who doggedly pursue the one player they think is the reason the Avalanche are failing to win. 

Occasionally these people, who presumably spend their free time shouting at rocks, clouds, or John Elway, will target a player and actually be correct. Like, for example, Matt Duchene, who was miscast as a top line center and lacked the motivation to be one. But mostly the scorned Avalanche player du jour is generally undeserving of the wrath that is heaped upon him. Take for example Paul Stastny and Ryan O’Reilly. 

Those gentlemen were hard working, defensively responsible, and the kind of players a team needs to succeed even if they are not superstars. Yet during their tenure in Colorado, they drew the ire of critics who felt their salaries were too high while their contributions were too thin. As with any stereotype, there is a nugget of truth. Those two did not always work well on the team and their frustrations with the direction the Avalanche were going at the time influenced their play. However, once they were gone, the Avalanche spent a considerable amount of capital and draft picks trying to replace them. 

This brings us to Tyson Barrie. During the swoon that hit the team in December that erased the team’s massive gains from early in the season, at any given time, in any given comments section under an Avalanche article there would be a comment to trade Barrie. “He’s soaking up salary while not playing defense!” howled the commenters as they gnashed their teeth and shook their fists, presumably at twin posters of Joe Sakic and John Elway (whom I’m throwing in to this argument as an example of how public sports figures in Denver can never, ever do anything right, until they trade down ten spots to land a potential superstar tight end before scoring a beast of an offensive lineman and a potential franchise quarterback in the second round and/or guide two legendary teams to Super Bowl victories at the end of their career. I’ll let you pick.)

True, Tyson Barrie is not Brent Burns. Nor is he Erik Karlsson. Nor is he Mark Giordano. He is also not Tony Stark, Jim Brown, Jesus Christ, or Clark Freaking Kent! New toys are fun. Cale Makar is great to watch. Samuel Girard can be the best skater on the ice at any one time. They both have very promising careers. But time and again Barrie has shown more often than not that he is the player that stirs the Avalanche offense from the blue line. 

In game two it was not Brent Burns or Erik Karlsson who stole the show. It was Tyson Barrie and his three points that turned the tide in San Jose and sent the Avalanche back to Denver with a clean slate. Trade Barrie? Get a life.