Greg Cronin bullish on Eagles’, Avs’ future – whenever hockey resumes

Greg Cronin, head coach of the Colorado Eagles, has passed his days during this pandemic like most others – and unlike most others.

He’s mostly been cooped up in his Fort Collins home, unable to go to his native Massachusetts because of more stringent shelter-in-place restrictions there. He’s compensated for that by getting out of the house and practicing some extreme social isolation, hiking some of the area’s most off-beat trails by himself, exploring as much of the area as he can on foot.

“It’s not like I couldn’t see some of the area before, but during this time of the shutdown, I’ve really gotten to experience more of the real beauty of the area, of the Rocky Mountain West. It’s just a place of such natural beauty,” said Cronin, the coach of the Colorado Eagles, the Avalanche’s American Hockey League affiliate.

Cronin, who has always been a fitness fanatic, converted a room in his Fort Collins condominium to one filled with weights and other gear, so he passes some of his days inside sculpting a body that, at age 56, would be the envy of probably three-quarters of guys have his age. A student of history, Cronin also passes his time with a considerable amount of reading, with the Bill O’Reilly series of historical nonfiction titles some of his particular favorites.