Sunday Morning Easy Thread
Good morning all. We’re in the calm before the storm begins with Rookie Camp opening on Friday and even tho’ the Avs are still working on their main Summer tasks of signing Big Z and engineering a solution to the Duchene situation, there’s nothing solid to report on either front. For now. Also lurking in the background is official news on the Avs AHL affiliation for next year and what, if anything, the St Louis Blues will be contributing to the San Antonio Rampage for this season. Like we’ve been saying since April, stay tuned.
In spite of all that there are Avalanche players doing things on the ice. Family Sports has ice time blocked out for Captain’s Practices Tuesday through Thursday, I believe at 10am, so if you’re looking for something to do stop by and say hi. Some of the youngsters have been competing already in the CHL and elsewhere, here’s what we’ve dug up.
- Igor Shvyryev has been playing very sparingly with Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the KHL but does have a goal to his credit. Our man Rudo is on the case and if anything notable happens he’ll make sure you’re the first to know
- The PG Cougars scored a 2-1 pre-season win yesterday over the Calgary Hitmen thanks to killing 6 out of 7 penalties. That’s a specialty of Avs prospect Josh Anderson so safe to say he came up big there.
- Conor Timmins and the Soo Grehounds dropped a 4-3 decision to Saginaw last night, also pre-season. Timmins had an assist and 3 SOG along with somehow taking a faceoff along the way.
More on all of this as it becomes available and get your rest now, things get hectic quick. The Rookie Showcase begins on Saturday with the Avs prospects taking on San Jose in San Jose. Thanks to the Sharks we will be able to watch this via their website so keep an eye out for the 1st GDT of the season in the hours leading up to the game. The Game vs Arizona next Monday will also be viewable on their website.
I havent seen much discussion about Bednar. What is the hivemind on him?
I’m not sure about hive mind, but I’m willing to give him a chance with a better roster. Hopefully without FB and some of the slower others, he’s able to put something together.
It’s his show this year, the old guard of assistant coaches has been removed. Sink or Swim.
Rumors are Bednar is on the hot seat, which probably isn’t fair considering what he came into last season.
Hopefully he gets a fair shake now that he has (hopefully) has some say in his staff, and the make up of the team.
I think a lot of evaluation will be going on the first half (even quarter?) of the season. A decent start above .500 would do wonders at taking the pressure off.
Personally, even if the team is at least mediocre, I’d be more inclined to grade Bednar this next season on developing the core and overall chemistry.
This is only my opinion, I was very excited in the beginning, much like everyone else with the thought of true pressure in all three zones. Very tenacious forecheck and D who moved their feet in the D zone. Thats what I was expecting, but presumably because of personnel this wasn’t possible.
Now I’m on the fence, my biggest gripe with Roy was his inability to coach the team he had instead of the one he wanted. (That and the damage he did to assemble it)
Seems the same could be said of Bednar, maybe . I’ll give him the year to prove he has some answers because It really was a strange collection of players and perhaps nobody could have gotten much out of that group. This year is all on him and I’m sure he understands this and we’ll see what him and Pratt have come up with, they’ve had all summer. With the addition of a PP coach with a new set of eyes coming in from the outside I’m staying positive
With any luck and cooperative customers, I may be able to make it down to Family Sports at least one day this week. If anything fun happens, I’ll let you know.
In what situation would Timmins take a face off.
5vs3?? 3 D , the only thing I could think of
Yeah, 5v3 and the forward gets tossed. Something like that. For some reason I remember Jan Hejda taking faceoffs in that situation.
I guess.
Only thing I can think of is in maybe a 5 on 3 or 4 on 3 situation where the center gets kicked out of the faceoff dot so one of the two defensemen has to take it (Timmins would be the 3 player side of course).
Nested comments! I don’t know if I can handle this!
I was quite excited to see this again. Makes reading the discussion so much easier.
And I finally figured out how to make my profile picture work. Still trying to decide if I run with this one (which has been my MHH one for forever) or switch to my twitter Colorado C one. Hm….,
It’s so nice to have a site again.