The Colorado Avalanche have officially made their first trade of the season, sending defenseman Ilya Solovyov to the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for 26-year-old right wing Valtteri Puustinen, and Pittsburgh’s 2026 7th round draft pick as well.
Solovyov has played 16 games for the Avs up until this point, with two assists and one goal. The one goal being his first career NHL goal, which came against the Columbus Blue Jackets on January 10. With Solovyov now being traded, the Avs are suddenly short a defenseman on their roster, which means a call-up will likely be coming ahead of Colorado’s game tomorrow against the Anaheim Ducks as Devon Toews is skating but not yet ready to play.
Valtteri Puustinen was a former seventh round pick in 2019 has not played a game in the NHL this season but has 66 career games with Pittsburgh. This season he has played 35 games for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the AHL so far. In that time, he’s picked up seven goals and 19 assists, which is some perfectly fine production. He’s been a good producer in the AHL over his career so if nothing else this is a move to fortify the Colorado Eagles. It remains to be seen if Puustinen will stay in the AHL after this move as the Avalanche do not have the services of depth forward Joel Kiviranta yet either.
Obviously, this is a pretty small trade on the whole, but still the first one that the Avs have made this season, nonetheless. There is no salary cap impact even if the Avs recall their new forward. With the Olympics coming up in just over two weeks, we might see more trades happen before then, now that Colorado’s started making some moves.