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Report: Teams are balking at Avs’ asking price for Landeskog

Calgary Flames v Colorado Avalanche

DENVER, CO - DECEMBER 27: Gabriel Landeskog #92 and Francois Beauchemin #92 of the Colorado Avalanche confer before a faceoff against the Calagary Flames at the Pepsi Center on December 27, 2016 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

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If the Colorado Avalanche expect to move captain Gabriel Landeskog, they might have a better chance of doing so during the off-season. That’s one takeaway from an interesting edition of TSN’s Insider Trading on Tuesday.

TSN’s Darren Dreger spells out the asking price for a trade in a more specific way: the Avalanche want a “top-level defenseman, a first-round pick, plus” for Landeskog.

To little surprise, teams are balking at that price, according to a panel including Dreger, Bob McKenzie and Pierre LeBrun.

It really does bring up the interesting question of how much, exactly, is the stout Swede worth?

He’s still just 24, and his current $5.571 million cap hit runs through the 2020-21 season. If a team likes what they see in Landeskog, they’d be getting that player for quite a while.

Such a team would need to heavily weight intangibles, such as his grit, as his counting numbers aren’t going to blow most people away.

He has just 13 points in 29 games this season, with a -10 rating. He’s generally come in the 20-goal, 50-ish point range, aside from his peak season of 65 points in 2013-14. His possession numbers are solid but unspectacular.

Again, very little of that really makes a team want to pay a high price for a guy who’s stock isn’t exactly soaring. Landeskog has been the captain of a team that hasn’t exactly been lighting the hockey world on fire, either.

So, ultimately, we wait. Will the Avalanche lower the price? Will such a price tag seem more appealing in the off-season?

It’s a situation to watch, and for some Avs fans, any distraction from the on-ice product might be welcome.