The Colorado Avalanche went into the 2017 offseason after completing an absolutely dreadful season. Joe Sakic and company made changes to the roster, getting younger and faster. Presumably he did this because the clear trend in the NHL is teams are younger and faster, which coincidentally fits in with head coach Jared Bednar’s system.
One of those such moves was to bring in free agent Nail Yakupov. At the time of the signing, I thought this was a decent enough move. There was no need to go out and try to sign a big name free agent, and I also suspect there was not much of a desire for them to come to Colorado.