Avalanche Officially Reunited at Pepsi Center for Phase 3

Almost four months to the day since the Colorado Avalanche last played a game at Pepsi Center, the team finally began preparations for the next contest on its schedule.

Colorado was coming off a 3-2 overtime victory against the New York Rangers on home ice on March 11 before the NHL paused the 2019-20 campaign the following day due to concerns from COVID-19. The league has since scrubbed the remainder of the regular season and set the stage for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and Qualifier, with the Avs getting a bye into the postseason and a chance to win the top seed in the Western Conference in the round-robin bracket.

While most of the Avalanche players had skated over the last three weeks as part of the NHL's Phase 2 of its Return to Play Plan--voluntary, small group sessions--Monday's activities on Colorado's home ice were the squad's first formal practices with coaches and all to begin Phase 3.

"I'm really excited to get going," said rookie defenseman Cale Makar following the on-ice session. "I mean it's been a long time coming. Just to be back to the rink, being able to come into the rink with the boys right now in a bigger group. Being able to get on the ice now is a lot nicer now."

From head coach Jared Bednar's vantage point, he liked what he saw.

"I love our energy on the ice today," Bednar said. "I thought both groups worked hard. They had good juice, pretty vocal, everyone's smiling and happy to kind of get back to their teammates and get back to training camp here, and everyone is looking forward to getting to Edmonton and starting the playoffs. So I think guys are excited to play from talking to him over the break and now seeing him again today."

The Avs are beginning this phase with 34 active players practicing and began the on-ice procession by splitting the squad into two groups, with each having its fair share of veterans, younger players and prospects who have been recalled from the American Hockey League's Colorado Eagles.

The formal part of each practice only lasted for 55 minutes, with Bednar and his staff trying to get a club that has skated collectively for four months back up to speed to play the fast-paced, high-tempo game that it's become known for.

"I thought they sustained their energy throughout the skates, and just talking with our support staff, everyone feels like our team's in a good place coming into this," Bednar said. "If we feel like we need to ramp up some conditioning, we have quite a bit of time here as well. You know, I think it's important to get our guys competing at a high level with some intensity, to give them some rest and to make sure that we're structurally and tactically ready to go when we're leaving Denver and heading to Edmonton which should be on the 26th… I like where we're at going into it. If we need to do some conditioning, we will, but for right now, I like what I saw during the first day. And again, we'll continue to evaluate that as camp goes on."

Unlike a traditional late summer/early fall training camp where NHL teams have three weeks and at least six exhibition games to get started for the grind of a seven-plus month, 82-game marathon, the Avalanche and the other 23 teams in the qualifier will be jumping into the most intense and important part of a campaign.

Erik Johnson, a veteran of 12 NHL seasons, noted whichever squad can successfully manage to ramp up the intensity the quickest will have an early advantage.

"We were doing full-ice stuff and the pace was good, and it's going be the team that comes together the quickest, gels the fastest, and unfortunately for us all of the momentum that we had built going into the playoffs was halted so we kind of have to recreate some of that," Johnson said. "The good thing from that is we were pretty banged up at the time so we're going to be healthy going into the playoffs. Whoever can get going the fastest and get their pace high and play with some tempo I think is going to be tough to beat, and I think with a young group that we have we should be in good shape, but it's kind of it's wide open right I mean any, anyone can win it."

For the Avalanche, a strong start can help the club reach its pre-season goal of obtaining the West's top seed for the playoffs away from the Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues and Vegas Golden Knights and be clicking at the right time for when games have elimination consequences to them.

"For us, obviously our goal is we want to make it all the way," Makar said. "We know we can, it's just about being able to go to Edmonton (where games will be played) and hopefully execute."

Before traveling to the Alberta provincial capital, the Avs have to get back to their game. As far as how the first day went, it was a solid start.

HEALTHY AGAIN

At the time of Colorado's last game in March, the team was dealing with its second stint of having a lengthy list of players on the injured list. The Avs had seven players out of the contest versus the Rangers, but they were going to have almost everyone back in the lineup in the coming days if the season wasn't paused.

So, it should be no surprise that after a four-month layoff, the Avalanche is nearly completely healthy for the start of camp.

"I was just going to come back before the season got paused, so bad timing for that. I took time, the three or four months we had just to get myself healthy," said Mikko Rantanen, who missed 16 games from Oct. 25-Nov. 29 and 12 games from Feb. 19 to the end of the season with two separate ailments. "My shoulder feels good, everything is feeling good. Just training in Finland--Finland was closed from March to the first week of June, pretty much like here--so [I was] just working out and rehabbing my shoulder, making sure that I'm ready when we come back. I'm feeling good right now."

The only player on the Colorado's injured list is forward Colin Wilson, who has been out since Oct. 28 after having surgery.

In terms of future information on injuries, there won't much given across the league over the next several months.

"I don't know if everyone's aware, but the NHLPA and NHL have come to an agreement that we're not going to address any injuries during Phase 3 or Phase 4…We'll just make decisions on a day to day basis as to when we're going to put our guys on the ice and when we're not," Bednar said. "Second part of it is the one thing about this is it's all new and different. So I think you have to keep an open mind when it comes to the way you handle your team, whether that's meetings, practices, days off. The scheduling part of it I think we have to be really open to change and to trying some different things when it comes to the coaching part of it. I think we've gone through enough with this group to know what some of our good options are in different situations."

LINEUP NOTES

While the first day is a chance to look ahead at what the Avs' lineup might look like on Aug. 2 when they play their first outing of the Stanley Cup Qualifier against the St. Louis Blues, Bednar said he is expecting to do a lot of experimenting with his alignment in the coming weeks before that first contest.

"We haven't made any decisions on our lineup or where guys' slot and where they'll play, we'll use the whole training camp, what we've seen through the course of the season." Bednar said. "This training camp, our exhibition game and even the round robin and make decisions and see where we're at come Game 1 of the playoffs, but I like what I'm seeing out of the guys day one right away."

Of note on the first day, Nathan MacKinnon centered a line with his two longtime wingers in Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, while Andre Burakovsky, Nazem Kadri and Valeri Nichushkin made up another trio in the first group.

The Avalanche received solid goaltending during the season with Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz splitting the majority of the time in goal, and Bednar said he'll see how each does in the coming weeks before choosing a starter for when games really start to matter in the conference quarterfinals, tentatively scheduled to begin on Aug. 11.

WHAT'S NEXT

With two weeks before the team will travel to Edmonton on July 26, the Avs will be staying busy with practices at Pepsi Center. Colorado is set to have another dual session on Tuesday morning.

Among the items to look forward to according to Bednar is some game-like scrimmaging before the team heads out on its postseason journey.

PRACTICE LINE COMBINATIONS

Group 1

Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen
Andre Burakovsky - Nazem Kadri - Valeri Nichushkin
Vladislav Kamenev - Tyson Jost - T.J. Tynan

Ryan Graves - Cale Makar
Samuel Girard - Erik Johnson
Conor Timmins - Jacob MacDonald

Philipp Grubauer & Pavel Francouz

Group 2

Vladislav Namestnikov - J.T. Compher - Joonas Donskoi
Matt Calvert - Pierre-Edouard Bellemare - Matt Nieto
Shane Bowers - Sheldon Dries - Logan O'Connor

Nikita Zadorov - Ian Cole
Mark Barberio - Kevin Connauton
Anton Lindholm - Bowen Byram

Michael Hutchinson & Adam Werner