Joe Sakic has two big contract extensions to work on this summer as Avalanche general manager. They are a little different.

Cale Makar? He can name his number. The Avalanche will work with Makar’s camp to see if they can get him to take a “discount” to help out the team. Ultimately, however, the superstar defenseman has the power.

Artturi Lehkonen’s next contract is trickier to pin down.

The Finnish winger turns 31 Saturday and is entering the final year of the five-year extension he signed after helping the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup in 2022. With a cap hit of $4.5 million, it’s easy to call that contract a steal. The organization has gotten good bang for their buck on it, with Lehkonen having the top four offensive seasons of his career with the Avalanche.

If you’ve watched an Avalanche game since they acquired the winger on March 21, 2022, you know exactly who Lehkonen is. No one will outwork or outsmart him. He’s coach Jared Bednar’s safety blanket, playing in all situations, and Nathan MacKinnon’s worker bee on the top line. It’s been a picture-perfect marriage since Lehkonen arrived from Montreal, to say the least.

It all sounds great. So why would there be concern over his next contract?

For as good as Lehkonen has been while in the lineup, injuries are a given with the way he plays the game. Listed at 5-foot-11, 179 pounds, Lehkonen plays much bigger than he is. That style can and does lead to injuries. He has not played a full season since arriving in Colorado, with his 70 games last season being the most he’s played in four full seasons here. Injuries have slowed him in the postseason two of the last three seasons. Given the way he plays the game, it’s fair to expect those injuries to still pop up. The fear is that years of playing aggressively will lead to a sudden drop-off in his game, as the new deal won’t kick in until he’s 32.

It’s not easy to find a comparable contract for Lehkonen on his next deal, but two spring to mind.

There’s Pittsburgh’s Bryan Rust, a similar type of player who has been the perfect complement to the highly skilled centers on the Penguins. He signed a six-year extension at 30 that sees him carry a cap hit of $5.125 million. Now at the age of 34, he is still a very effective player, scoring 65 points each of the past two seasons.

The cap has risen significantly since Rust signed, so the cost of a Lehkonen extension would be a fair bit more, but it’s a starting point. If Lehkonen looks as good at 34 as Rust does, the Avalanche won’t care so much about the back end of his next contract.

And then there’s Ondrej Palat. The now 35-year-old winger played a similar role to the one that Lehkonen plays on Tampa Bay’s Stanley Cup-winning teams before they let him walk in free agency back in 2022 at the age of 31. Palat signed a five-year, $30 million deal that summer with New Jersey and his game fell off a cliff. He’s never scored more than 31 points since leaving the Lightning. The Devils had to throw in draft picks to give Palat away to the Islanders, with whom the Czech winger posted just five points in 29 games.

Like the Rust contract, the Palat deal was signed when the cap was stagnant. It’d be fair to expect Lehkonen’s next deal to cost more than $6 million annually with the rising salary cap, but it’s one of the few comparable out there given role and production heading into the deal. If Lehkonen’s next cap hit started with a “7,” it wouldn’t come as a shock with the rising cap.

Would it be a surprise if Lehkonen’s game declined like Palat’s? Yes, given his goal-scoring production the last two seasons. But that’s always the risk with smaller players that play the game like Lehkonen does.

It’s a risk Colorado seems more than willing to take.

With Valeri Nichushkin in Columbus, Lehkonen becomes Bednar’s lone do-it-all winger on the roster. He improves every line he’s on. The Avalanche have no intention of letting him go, making an extension likely. Both sides are expected to talk as July progresses.

“We’re going to talk to their agent in the summer,” Sakic said last week. “We’re definitely going to be looking to hopefully come to an agreement with Artturi as well. He’s such a big, important player for our team.”

The window for the Avalanche to win is still open, even if it shrinks every year. Their odds of winning are greatly improved with Lehkonen around, which is why the organization wants to get an extension done.

They just have to hope he ages more like Rust than Palat over the next few years. And as long as he is still effective in this championship window, they can leave the worrying about the back end of the extension for another day.