{"id":95970,"date":"2025-08-25T13:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T13:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/95970\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T13:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T13:43:07","slug":"tyson-barrie-announces-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/95970\/","title":{"rendered":"Tyson Barrie Announces Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid his participation in yesterday\u2019s Avalanche alumni game, defenseman\u00a0Tyson Barrie<\/a>\u00a0confirmed to Nathan Rudolph of the DNVR Avalanche podcast<\/a> that he\u2019s retired.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A third-round pick of the Avalanche in 2009, Barrie was a highly intriguing offensive option out of the WHL\u2019s Kelowna Rockets and quickly looked like he could be something of a steal. He led the league in assists by a defenseman in his post-draft year and was named the WHL\u2019s top defenseman as a result, but concerns about the righty\u2019s size and defensive acumen meant he returned for a fourth and final season of junior hockey before making the jump to the pro ranks in 2011-12. Even then, he spent most of that year in the minors and only received 10 NHL games.<\/p>\n

He slowly worked his way up the Avs\u2019 depth chart, seeing less and less AHL time each season before earning his final recall in November 2013, early in his age-22 season. While he checked in as a fringe top-four option at even strength, he overtook\u00a0Erik Johnson<\/a>\u00a0as Colorado\u2019s top power-play quarterback and ended up recording a 13-25\u201338 scoring line in 64 games over the balance of the campaign. Those 0.59 points per game placed him inside the top-15 among NHL rearguards that year.<\/p>\n

The 2014-15 campaign marked Barrie\u2019s true coming of age. He broke the 50-point plateau \u2013 the first of four times he\u2019d end up doing so in his career \u2013 while serving as Colorado\u2019s de facto No. 1 option for a good portion of the season with Johnson injured. He would continue averaging north of 21 minutes per game for the remainder of his Colorado tenure, twice earning fringe votes for year-end All-Star honors.<\/p>\n

Colorado didn\u2019t have a ton of team success during Barrie\u2019s six-year run as a full-timer there, though, only making the playoffs three times and winning a round once. His struggles away from the puck played a significant role in that. Only once, his final season in Denver, did Barrie manage to record a positive expected rating based on shot quality generated and allowed when he was on the ice at even strength. He posted a negative actual plus\/minus rating in his last four years for Colorado, including a league-worst -34 mark in the Avs\u2019 disastrous 22-win season in 2016-17.<\/p>\n

Entering the 2019-20 season, Barrie was a pending unrestricted free agent and had been made redundant with Cale Makar<\/a>\u2019s emergence in the preceding postseason. That kicked off the latter journeyman phase of his career, beginning with a July 1 blockbuster that sent him to the Maple Leafs in exchange for\u00a0Nazem Kadri<\/a>. It didn\u2019t work out all that well for Barrie or Toronto. He was no longer his club\u2019s top power play option, sitting behind\u00a0Morgan Rielly<\/a>\u00a0on the Leafs\u2019 power play pyramid, and his offensive output declined to a more pedestrian 5-34\u201339 scoring line in 70 games as a result.<\/p>\n

With Barrie\u2019s point production his only real calling card, the fit in Toronto obviously wasn\u2019t going to be a long-term one. They let him become a free agent during the COVID-laced 2020 offseason, and he proceeded to land a one-year, $3.75MM \u201cprove-it\u201d deal<\/a> with the Oilers.<\/p>\n

Barrie was plopped onto a top power-play unit in Edmonton with the two-headed monster of Leon Draisaitl<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Connor McDavid<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the league\u2019s two leading scorers in the shortened 2021 season \u2013 and responded with the best campaign of his career. He recorded 48 points in the truncated 56-game schedule, leading the NHL in scoring among defenders. His defensive deficiencies remained quite visible, though. He only managed a +5 rating compared to regular partner Darnell Nurse<\/a>\u2019s +27 mark, and as Edmonton was swept in the first round of the playoffs, Barrie became the first defenseman in league history to lead the position in scoring while not receiving a single Norris Trophy vote.<\/p>\n

While Barrie remained a fine puck-mover for the Oilers, his production never quite found that gear again. His minutes began to drop back below the 20-minute mark, and at the 2023 deadline, he was sent to the Predators in the deal that landed Edmonton two-way dynamo\u00a0Mattias Ekholm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nashville marked the last real turning point in Barrie\u2019s career, and it wasn\u2019t for the better. While he was still quite effective for the Preds down the stretch after the trade, recording 12 points in 24 games, that didn\u2019t last very long. In 2023-24 \u2013 the final year of a three-year, $13.5MM extension he signed with Edmonton \u2013 Barrie tumbled down Nashville\u2019s depth chart and ended up becoming a routine healthy scratch by the time the season ended. As such, he was limited to just one goal and 15 points in 41 games and only drew into the Preds\u2019 playoff lineup once in their first-round loss to the Canucks.<\/p>\n

Ahead of his age-33 season and with his value at an all-time low, Barrie ended up needing to settle for a professional tryout with the Flames to participate in an NHL training camp last fall. He did convert that into a $1.25MM contract in early October, but the fit wasn\u2019t quite what Calgary hoped for. He only logged 13 appearances for the club and even ended up on waivers and cleared, seeing his first AHL action in over a decade with the Calgary Wranglers.<\/p>\n

Barrie was a free agent this summer, and there was no reported interest in him on the open market. He hangs up his skates with 822 games played in 14 seasons, 23rd among his rather stacked draft class. He scored 110 goals and added 398 assists for 508 points, 10th in the league among defensemen since he debuted back in the 2011-12 season. He averaged just over 21 minutes per night for his career and made $47.85MM in estimated total earnings, per PuckPedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of us at PHR congratulate Barrie on his fine career and wish him the best in his next steps.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Sergei Belski-Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid his participation in yesterday\u2019s Avalanche alumni game, defenseman\u00a0Tyson Barrie\u00a0confirmed to Nathan Rudolph of the DNVR Avalanche podcast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,762,48,758,453,760,4247,448,1705,32249,82,746,56087],"class_list":{"0":"post-95970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary-flames","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-colorado-avalanche","12":"tag-edmonton-oilers","13":"tag-nashville-predators","14":"tag-newsstand","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-retirement","17":"tag-retirements","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","20":"tag-tyson-barrie"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}