The Colorado Avalanche blue line will look noticeably different next year, but for today let’s set aside the discussion of whether Sakic upgraded the defense (he didn’t) or whether the Avs will finally have a semi-solid blue line (they won’t) to discuss pairings for next year.
Anyone who’s not a fan of the Avs probably would never guess that Nick Holden was playing over 20 minutes a night. This makes his trade a fairly big hole in terms of minutes. In fact all of the Avs’ top 4 logged fairly big minutes/game (not surprising), but the drop after that is significant.