A team can offer O'Reilly maximum $5,046,585.00 of annual average value without having to give up a second round pick along with a first and third it would cost a team in compensation to sign O'Reilly to an offer sheet.

Is O'Reilly worth it? Well, that's a question that could be better answered by the internal metrics the Avalanche presumably use to evaluate players. By my external ones, compiled over at Behind the Net in form of shot-differential data, I can tell that Colorado is a worse team at handling the puck this year compared to last, although the season is still young.

Last season, the Avalanche took 49.8% of the total number of unblocked shots in score-close situations of the games they played, while this season, that number is precariously down to 46.1%, the sixth-worst in the league.

O'Reilly led the team in scoring last season, but where him and Landeskog were regarded as being the most valuable was in their two-way play against tough opposition. Again, according to Behind the Net, Landeskog and O'Reilly were Nos. 1 and 2 on their team by the site's "quality of competition" metric and still managed to out-shoot and out-score that tough opposition as a unit. This season, their job has fallen into the hands of David Jones and Paul Statstny, who are not as elite of a puck-possession unit, it would seem.

It's ultimately up to GM to decide when to make the call, whether it's to trade O'Reilly for help or simply sign him. But it's going to have to be soon, or the Avs are going to miss the playoffs for the third straight year, and Sherman might not get another chance to get this really easy decision right.