With less than a month before the opening of training camps, there are still a number of unrestricted free agents looking to find a landing spot, either on a professional tryout contract or a one-year deal. Earlier this week, the St. Louis Blues invited veteran winger Milan Lucic in on a PTO, and on Wednesday, former Sabres winger Victor Olofsson signed a one-year deal with the Colorado Avalanche for $1.575 million. 

The 30-year-old Swede was a seventh-round pick of Buffalo in 2014 and spent four years in Sweden before coming to North America in 2018. After scoring 30 goals in AHL Rochester in 2019, the winger scored 20 goals as a rookie in the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season, 20 goals in 2022, and a career-high 28 in 2023, when the Sabres came within a point of making the playoffs.

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Olofsson’s decline to seven goals in 51 games in his final season with Buffalo was due more to a demotion to a fourth-line role by head coach Don Granato than an inability to score. After signing a one-year deal with former teammate Jack Eichel in Vegas, Olofsson bounced back with an injury-shortened 15 goals in 56 games (which again would average over 20 in a full year).

The signing with Colorado appears to be to fill the role vacated by the departed Jonathan Drouin, who signed a two-year, $8 million contract with the NY Islanders Olofsson can still put the puck in the net, especially on the power play, and may be insurance as a potential top-six forward replacement with the questionable health status of veteran Gabriel Landeskog. 

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