Welcome in to the DNVR Avalanche podcast. We got A.J. Ruto and Jesse coming to you live on a Thursday. We'll get to the Hall of Fame class in that conversation in a little bit. First, the aves news of the day. Eric Johnson sounds like we'll be going to free agency, not staying with the abs. I don't think this is all that surprising to any of us.

I mean, everybody's saying their goodbyes and stuff,

but we'll see what the market is for him.

Never know.

And, I mean, just given his credentials and his size and handedness,

I expect he'll get an offer somewhere,

but it really wouldn't surprise me if we got into August. And the abs are like, have 700K to come hang out. He was unsigned and it was like, hey, give that guy like a PTO. Yeah. And be like, hey, just show up, just get through training camp healthy and we'll give you a deal. You can come beer number seven or something. Like no Jack Johnson thing from a few years ago. Yeah. It'd be weird to see the abs give Eric Johnson a PTO.

It would. But it would just be like a, it would be like a, we're just checking on health

and health alone. And that's it. Not like a, we're trying to see if you can still play.

Like they have to, they already know that decision. Yeah.

And letting him, letting him get to free agency tells you that they feel like they can find

an upgrade on him.

Yeah, I mean.

Which I think they can.

I was, I was going to say, with all due respect, Eric Johns.

And my, my biggest thing, we talked about it.

I think it was last week or maybe it was earlier this week, where he just, he lost

his ability to flex it up and down the lineup.

He was so clearly exposed when he played anything above third pairing minutes, third

pairing matchups.

I'm not going to say that it was entirely his fault because it wasn't.

Right.

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