Just saw that Nichushkin is signed for 8 years. Holy shit. What happens if he doesn't come back? His contract is terminated?
All of that lies in the CBA or possibly mediation if Nuke can't stay clean.
Avs have 2 massive question marks for their cap situation for both Landy and Nuke. Both have a lot of term left. Landy has missed 2 seasons due to injury. Have to be realisitc in that he's not likely to return to the form he had before he went down. So, if he's pain free this fall but his production is down, that is going to hurt their chances of PO success. If he can't return physically, then he'll end his career on LTIR. But, they should know one way or another this fall.
As for Nuke, who knows. At this point, not sure they can count on him. So, they may not know whether they have his cap space to spend or whether they need to account for it since he's likely to return at some point in the season. LTIR is only good if the player is done for the season. If the player is out 40 games, you need to have the cap room to bring the player off LTIR otherwise, you can't activate the player.
Free agency begins in like 7 weeks. Will the Avs know how much they can spend by then? Landy, probably have some idea, but won't really know til closer to camp when everything ramps up. Nuke, he'd only be like 8 weeks into stage 4.