Defenseman
Brandon Gormley will make his Avalanche debut Wednesday night after all against Carolina at the Pepsi Center.
Here are the
game notes.
One day after staying on the ice after practice to shoot pucks with suspended defenseman
Tyson Barrie, Gormley was informed by coach
Patrick Roy that he'd play against the Hurricanes. He'll be paired with
Nick Holden.
"When you get your chance you have to take advantage of it and show that you do belong in the lineup every night," Gormley, 23, said Wednesday morning. "Very excited. You don't want to be sitting around doing nothing, but at the same time you take every practice as a game and get better every day and be ready for that opportunity."
Gormley, who is 6-feet-2 and 196 pounds, will replace
Brad Stuart in the lineup. He was acquired Sept. 9 from Arizona for
Stefan Elliott. He was the Coyotes' first-round pick (No. 13) in the 2010 NHL draft and has two goals and two assists in 32 career games. He had all four points in 27 games last season when he missed six weeks with an ankle injury.
"I just want to play my game, be solid defensively," he said. "Moving the puck is a strong suit and hopefully that leads to some offense for us. As a player you learn to deal with these situations. It's not my first time doing this (in the NHL), so I'll be ready."
Roy said he "has no expectations" about Gormley and is curious to see what he can contribute.
"I'm not saying I want him to be the Nick Holden of two years ago as we talked about (Tuesday), but it'd be great for him to have a good game," Roy said. "I thought he had a great training camp and I thought he practiced well."
Holden was a healthy scratch the first 11 games before he played in 2013-14. He was scratched for 14 of the following 26 games, played regularly after that starting in mid-January and finished with 10 goals in 54 games.
*****
I had a nice chat with Hurricanes defenseman
John-Michael Liles, who spent his first seven NHL seasons with the Avalanche and still has a home in the Denver area. He stayed there Tuesday night after the Hurricanes arrived from Raleigh.
Liles, 35, is married now and he and his wife have a four-month-old daughter.
"It's been pretty amazing," said Liles, who is the highest-scoring defenseman in Quebec/Colorado franchise history with 275 points (68 goals, 207 assists) in 523 games. "Really changes your life."
Liles is in the final year of a four-year, $15.5 million contract and doesn't know where his career will take him after this season, but he's enjoying his time with Carolina despite the team's 1-4-0 start.
"It's kind of been either a really good game for us or a very bad game so far," he said. "It's been kind of night and day and we're figuring it out. Losing (defenseman
James) Wisniewski (to a torn ACL) was a tough injury for us, but things happen and you try and battle. I think we're a better team than our record and we've played better than our record, we just haven't closed out a couple of games that we potentially could have won."
Here are the lineups:
HURRICANES
FORWARDS
Brock McGinn -- Eric Staal -- Kris Versteeg
Nathan Gerbe -- Jordan Staal -- Andrej Nestrasil
Jeff Skinner -- Victor Rask -- Elias Lindholm
Brad Malone -- Jay McClement -- Chris Terry
DEFENSE
Ron Hainsey -- Justin Faulk
John-Michael Liles -- Michal Jordan
Noah Hanifin -- Ryan Murphy
GOALIES
Cam Ward
Eddie Lack
AVALANCHE
FORWARDS
Mikko Rantanen -- Matt Duchene -- Jarome Iginla
Gabriel Landeskog -- Nathan MacKinnon -- Alex Tanguay
Blake Comeau -- Carl Soderberg -- John Mitchell
Cody McLeod -- Mikhail Grigorenko -- Jack Skille
DEFENSE
Francois Beauchemin -- Erik Johnson
Nikita Zadorov -- Nate Guenin
Brandon Gormley -- Nick Holden
GOALIES
Semyon Varlamov
Reto Berra
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