Artturi Lehkonen is the only member of the Avalanche who has previously been a teammate of Brett Kulak. Amid the emotions of losing a longtime teammate in Samuel Girard, Lehkonen was complimentary about the defenseman the team is acquiring.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally good defender. Moves well. Can play up and down the lineup and fill any role asked of him,\u201d Lehkonen told me on Tuesday, just hours after the Avs traded Girard and a second-round draft pick for Kulak.<\/p>\n
Lehkonen played with Kulak in Montreal from 2019-2022. At the time, Kulak was just finding his way as a regular defenseman in the NHL. When the Canadiens made a surprise Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2021, Kulak appeared in just 13 postseason games.<\/p>\n
That was his first trip the Stanley Cup Final. He spent each of the last two seasons as a part of the Edmonton Oilers, which both included Stanley Cup runs that ended with a loss to the Florida Panthers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been in the finals like three times now,\u201d Lehkonen said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great player with experience in big games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Avs traded Girard and his $5 million cap hit for many reasons. Partly because he was passed on the depth chart by others, like Sam Malinski. And because they needed a different type of defenseman to fill his role on the third pair.<\/p>\n
The top two pairs have been stable pretty much all year. Cale Makar and Devon Toews are at the top, and Josh Manson and Brent Burns have built chemistry together as the second pair. Malinski, who played with Girard, is likely going to get the first look with Kulak.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big trade, and news that\u2019s kind of tough to hear, just with G being around for as long as he has, and him being my D partner,\u201d Malinski said. \u201cI loved playing with him, and he was a great guy to have in the locker room, but I wish him all the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malinski continued, commenting on his new teammate in Kulak: \u201cI\u2019ve watched him. He\u2019s a really good player, and he\u2019s got good size, strong, pretty steady, and he\u2019s got a lot of experience too. So I\u2019m definitely excited to play with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Girard was one of the Avalanche\u2019s longest tenured players. Aside from Gabe Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon, nobody had been around as long as him. He was one of the key pieces the Avs acquired in the Matt Duchene trade in Nov. 2017. <\/p>\n
Colorado qualified for the playoffs in every season with Girard. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a part of the business that sucks, seeing a teammate who you had a lot of success with go,\u201d Lehkonen said. \u201cBut that\u2019s part of the business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Landeskog: \u201cI\u2019m gonna miss G. I still remember when he first got here, he was a young little pup.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artturi Lehkonen is the only member of the Avalanche who has previously been a teammate of Brett Kulak.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[2320,193,265,144,7,5,264,21,5147,4,4520,1340],"class_list":{"0":"post-470867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-artturi-lehkonen","9":"tag-avalanche","10":"tag-canadiens","11":"tag-colorado-avalanche","12":"tag-gabriel-landeskog","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-montreal","15":"tag-montreal-canadiens","16":"tag-montrealcanadiens","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-sam-malinski","19":"tag-samuel-girard"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116130160609522982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}