The Colorado Avalanche may have landed one of the NHL’s cleanest bargains when they extended Parker Kelly last summer, and Frank Seravalli thinks the gap between what Colorado pays and what Kelly could have made is massive.
In a recent Sportsnet column about players who might end up regretting deals signed before the league’s salary explosion, Seravalli pointed straight at Kelly and made him the headline example. “Perhaps none more than Colorado’s Parker Kelly,” Seravalli wrote.
Colorado signed Kelly to a four-year extension on July 1, 2025, worth $6.8 million total. At the time, it looked like a smart bet on an undrafted player who had carved out a real fit in Denver. Now, after what followed, it looks like the Avalanche got in front of the market at exactly the right moment.
Kelly exploded for 21 goals and 35 points in a full 82-game season last year, then backed it up by scoring on Opening Night against the LA Kings. That kind of production changed the conversation entirely. Seravalli estimates Kelly could have pulled in about $5 million per year if he had waited to hit free agency this offseason.
“How much more would Kelly have earned had he played out the year and gone to market? The ballpark is $5 million per year, a far cry from the $6.8 million total signed for in 2025.”
Instead, Colorado has him at a $1.7 million cap hit.
That is the kind of number that changes a roster.
The Avalanche didn’t just get a useful player at a discount. They locked in four years of cost certainty before the rest of the league had a chance to catch up to Kelly’s value. And that matters even more when you consider what the alternative might have been.
If Colorado had let the 2025-26 season play out without an extension, Kelly would have reached the summer coming off a 21-goal, 35-point season and another year as one of the team’s most dependable defensive forwards. At that point, his next contract would no longer be a bargain-bin deal. It could have landed near $5 million a year, which would have put the Avalanche in a very different spot.
With expensive stars and major commitments already on the books, paying a fourth-line center that kind of money would have been tough to justify, no matter how valuable he’d become. Trading him would have been the other path.
That’s why the extension looks even sharper now. Colorado didn’t just secure a productive player. It may have avoided a future decision between overpaying Kelly or moving him out.
The Avalanche announced the extension after Kelly’s first season in Colorado, when he had 19 points and 161 hits in 80 games. Nobody could have projected a 21-goal breakout from there, but the organization clearly saw something real: a player who could handle hard bottom-six minutes and still add offense.
Kelly has also said that playing with Colorado’s stars and learning from Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog helped push his game forward.
The result is a deal that now looks wildly team-friendly. Seravalli believes Kelly might have earned nearly three times as much on the open market. Colorado will pay him $1.7 million.
That’s not just a good contract. It’s the kind of contract that can shape the rest of a team’s roster.
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