Not everyone is sold on the Colorado Avalanche’s biggest offseason extension.
Just weeks after Colorado committed to veteran defenseman Brett Kulak with a five-year, $22.5 million contract carrying a $4.5 million average annual value, one prominent NHL publication has already labeled the deal among the league’s worst.
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In its annual ranking of the NHL’s best and worst contracts, The Athletic placed Kulak’s extension at No. 8 on its list of the least favorable deals, pointing to concerns that the 32-year-old’s underlying performance has declined significantly despite earning a long-term commitment.
Kulak arrived in Colorado after the Olympic break in a trade that sent Samuel Girard and a second-round draft pick to the Pittsburgh Penguins. His offensive numbers were never going to jump off the page, but the veteran quickly carved out an important role on the Avalanche blue line. He stabilized the team’s top four, eventually settling in on the second pairing alongside Sam Malinski, and logged stretches next to Cale Makar on the top pair whenever Colorado needed him there.
The criticism, though, isn’t about his counting stats at all.
The Athletic built its case around Kulak’s underlying defensive metrics, especially his relative impact on expected goals at five-on-five. The outlet argues his numbers slid throughout the season, and that the decline showed up no matter which team he was skating for.
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“His drop-off at five-on-five wasn’t exactly an isolated incident; it was consistent across three different playoff teams,” The Athletic wrote. “Kulak’s relative impact on xG was minus-0.48 in Edmonton, minus-0.14 in Pittsburgh, and a ghastly minus-1.2 in Colorado. In all three locales, his impact on goals was even worse.”
This is where I part ways with the analytics crowd — the writers who lean so heavily on the numbers that they lose sight of everything else happening on the ice. The Athletic zeroed in on one narrow slice of data here, when there are plenty of other indicators suggesting Kulak has actually been a net positive for this team.
There’s also a metric these rankings tend to overlook entirely: watching the game. Since Kulak joined the Avalanche, I’ve noticed — without needing a spreadsheet to tell me so — that there’s been a real stretch where he simply wasn’t on the ice for a goal against. For a defenseman, whose entire job description is keeping the other team from piling on his goaltender, that’s no small thing.
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He backed it up in the playoffs, too. Kulak was effective for most of Colorado’s run and scored the game-winning goal that sent the Avalanche past the Minnesota Wild and into the Western Conference Final. Yes, his third-round performance dipped — but so did nearly everyone else’s on that roster. Singling him out doesn’t feel fair. Furthermore, Kulak is a pure defensive defenseman, so getting on his case for not having glamorous offensive prowess doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Analytics has its place. It’s a genuinely useful lens for evaluating performance, and I’m not arguing otherwise. But leaning on numbers alone leaves gaps, and those gaps matter. There’s still no substitute for actually watching the games — at least not in my book.
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