Not much news to report from Avalanche practice Friday, other than
Joonas Donski was given a “maintenance day” and wasn’t on the ice after his two-goal effort Thursday in the 5-3 win against Calgary.
He’s expected to play Saturday against Minnesota at the Pepsi Center.
Coach
Jared Bednar was happy for the most part with his team’s performance. He had mixed reviews for the defense group while singling out
Samuel Girard for a solid game, wasn’t real pleased with the penalty killing – the Flames went 2-of-4 on power plays – and said there are things that need to be cleaned up.
“It’s expected,” he said Friday. “You’re not going to play the perfect game every night, especially in Game One of the season. The goal is to identify the things that we can get better at and go to work on them in practice and identify things we were good at and helped us create the scoring chances we wanted and make sure we continue to build on those strengths.
My
NHL.com GAME RECAP.
“Details, minor details,” Bednar added. “Getting to the right position and be available for the puck on the breakouts, not playing on the move. I call it guys coming in and swinging and getting ready for breakouts when the puck’s in question, stopping in position and make sure we’re talking.
“That caused a lot of our issues last night, and there’s a couple things we can clean up on the defensive side of it in D-zone coverage as well.”
The Avalanche flipped their top two pairings against the Flames. Girard was with
Erik Johnson, and rookie
Cale Makar skated with
Nikita Zadorov.
Ryan Graves and rookie
Conor Timmins were the third pair.
Bednar wanted to use the Girard-Johnson duo against Calgary’s top line of
Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan and
Elias Lindholm. Gaudreau and Monahan each had a goal and an assist, but their points came on power plays.
“It’s a really good line, one of the best in the league,” he said. “We like what we’ve seen out of Girard and Erik Johnson’s play with him in the past, so get two sturdy guys back there who can defend that top line. You just have to sort out the other couple pairs and see how they work out.
"We liked some of the things we saw. Like I said last night, I think our D-corps as a whole can be better, more consistent. So they saw some of that stuff (on video) this morning and I expect them to be better tomorrow.”
Bednar said he hadn’t decided whether to make any lineup changes for Saturday. Forwards
Vladislav Kamenev and
Colin Wilson were healthy scratches Thursday, along with defenseman
Mark Barberio.
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