Dater’s Daily Links: Grubauer is cycling 100 miles per day

Philipp Grubauer talked a little to someone from the NHL’s house website today, and said he was ready to play right when the shutdown happened, on March 13, but that the Avs had so many injuries to key players at the time that they might have had to start the playoffs with an “AHL team.”

“At [that] time we had many injuries, many important players were sidelined, so the pause came at a good time, otherwise we would have started into the players with [our] AHL team. We hope that we can continue soon. Everybody wants to play hockey,” Grubauer told NHL.com.

Grubauer also talked about how it’s been tough to stay sharp with his vocation during the shutdown:

“My hand-eye coordination has reached the zero point; you don’t get 500 or 600 shots fired in your direction each day,” Grubauer told NHL.com. “If you don’t have that for 2-3 weeks, then you are losing it, but I think that it’ll come back fast. You can work with a tennis ball and a tennis racket, hit the wall and put some shots on you, but there’s not much [else] that you can do. It’s difficult at the moment.

“Before the lockdown came, I picked up some weights out of the gym and built up something in my garage. The Rocky Mountains are one reason why I stayed here in Denver. I bought a racing bike and I am cycling about 100 miles per day as well as doing a workout with weights. I’d love to go hiking in the mountains as well, but you have to watch out that there are not too many people out there, which wouldn’t be too good. I prefer cycling.”

One hundred miles per day. Gee, thanks, Groob, for making me feel like a lazy slob.

As I wrote yesterday, my biggest question for Jared Bednar, entering a potential season resumption, would be: who’s your starting playoff goalie, Philipp Grubauer or Pavel Francouz?

Some other links:

• Still no word on when the NHL Draft will be held, but it seems more and more likely it’ll be early next month. The Avs have six picks in the 2020 Draft (Nos. 27, 80, 120, 151, 167, 213)  (TSN).
• The Hockey News’ Ken Campbell strongly disagrees with a potential early June Draft (Hockey News)
• The New York Post‘s Larry Brooks is OK with a June Draft, under one condition (NY Post)
• Erik Johnson did some talking with the Avs on their house site too (in case you’re wondering, the Avs aren’t allowing their players to talk to independent media people like me during the shutdown. I’m not mad about it, as long as the rule applies to everyone else). (Mile High Sticking).
• A former NHL front office exec was asked to judge who is more valuable, from the 2012 and ’13 drafts, Gabe Landeskog or Jonathan Huberdeau? (Hockey News)

PANDEMIC POP-CULTURE RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK:

• I’m re-reading a book from about 30 years ago called “Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder” by Samuel Wilson Fussell. It’s an often-times hilarious first-person account of a guy who caught the weightlifting “disease” after being a scared, skinny runt. I have a very similar story myself, having gone from 6-5, 135 as a high-school senior to 6-5, 215 as a college sophomore, who could curl 185 pounds for 10 reps. Man, I miss those days, just lifting with my musclehead buddies. Life was so simple then!