For some pending UFAs, the beginning of the regular season can be a stop-and-drop regarding extension negotiations. That doesn’t appear to be the case between the Avalanche and Martin Necas.
“Colorado has communicated clearly to the Necas camp that it wants to extend him at some point this season,” Pierre LeBrun writes for The Athletic, but those discussions “haven’t yet gotten into the nitty-gritty of exchanging offers and counteroffers.” The belief is they’re waiting to let Necas extend his sample size in Colorado into this regular season “before taking those discussions to the next level.”
Necas’ extension talks carry a different context than those of his peers for the 2026 UFA class. There’s arguably more pressure on the Avalanche to find a way to retain him than almost any other big-name free agent. He was the only high-end asset acquired when they dealt Mikko Rantanen to the Hurricanes in last January’s blockbuster deal – letting Necas walk will amount to them losing two top-line talents for almost nothing aside from depth center Jack Drury.
These talks also come at a time when Necas’ value is at an all-time high. The 2017 No. 12 overall pick has been prone to some significant season-to-season point swings in recent years, but he popped in a considerable way in 2024-25 by breaking the point-per-game threshold for the first time. He finished the year with a 27-56–83 scoring line in 79 appearances, closing out the year with 28 points in 30 games after arriving in Denver.
With that in mind, along with a quickly rising salary cap, Necas’ extension is projected to net him nearly $10MM per season on a seven-year deal, according to AFP Analytics. He, along with others like Adrian Kempe and Alex Tuch, is waiting for some of the A-list names like Connor McDavid and Kirill Kaprizov to sign deals and set the market for the 2026 class, LeBrun writes. With Kempe and Tuch also angling for eight-figure cap hits, Necas will as well. The Avs then run into the same problem they did with Rantanen – being hesitant to register such a large contract with franchise defenseman Cale Makar set to potentially double his $9MM cap hit when he becomes a free agent in 2027. Of course, that Rantanen deal was made before the league released official salary cap projections that were in significant excess of expectations.
Even for 2026-27 accounting, a $10MM cap hit for Necas could be something of a tight squeeze. Doing so would leave them with roughly $16MM in space to account for eight roster spots, according to PuckPedia. Outside of Necas, though, they don’t have any high-impact expiring names, so filling out those jobs with an average salary of $2MM might not be too much of an obstacle.