The Avalanche made another move on the blueline on Wednesday, acquiring depth defenseman Nick Blankenburg from the Nashville Predators for a 2027 fifth-round draft pick.<\/p>\n
Blankenburg, 27, is listed at 5\u20199, 177 lbs, and is a puck-moving blueliner who saw his game evolve in two seasons with Nashville. This year, he has six goals and 21 points in 49 games, while averaging 17:58 per game. Last season, he posted four goals and 16 points in 60 games, averaging a career-high 19:33 per game.<\/p>\n
The right-shot defenseman gives Colorado a solid No. 7 option. <\/p>\n
This is the third in-season trade to the blueline for Colorado. In January, general manager Chris MacFarland sent No. 7 defenseman Ilya Solovyov to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Just over a month later, the two teams got together again, and the Avs acquired Brett Kulak for Samuel Girard and a second-round draft pick.<\/p>\n
Kulak filled the void that Girard had been playing on the third pair. But they still needed a seventh option in case of injuries. Blankenburg will likely fill that role. <\/p>\n
Blankenburg was an undrafted free agent before signing with Columbus in 2022. The native of Washington, Mich., played four years for the Michigan Wolverines and served as a captain in his senior season. Blankenburg is a pending unrestricted free agent and makes league-minimum $775,000 against the cap. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Avalanche made another move on the blueline on Wednesday, acquiring depth defenseman Nick Blankenburg from the Nashville…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,231,4,19340],"class_list":{"0":"post-486983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nashville-predators","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-nick-blankenburg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116176797040305249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486983","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=486983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}