Jared Bednar not pleased with Avalanche effort in Saturday camp session

About halfway through Saturday’s on-ice session, Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar paused practice, called his players to center ice and made it very clear he was not too pleased with his team’s physicality nor its intensity. It was certainly a noted tonal change coming from a coach who generally exudes stoicism and composure.

Between the loud expletives, it was pretty easy to discern what Bednar was asking of his players — something to the effect of “you better start learning to check or we’re all going to be golfing sooner than we’d hoped,” albeit in more verbose and R-rated terms.

Bednar wanted more … something… from his guys. Passion seemed to be the No. 1 desire, and he wasn’t seeing it. Things seemed to pick up on that front from there, though. Halting practice proved to be a turning point for his players during Day 5 of the Avs’ Phase 3 training camp session at Pepsi Center.

His players got the message.

“I think our whole team is about intensity and competitiveness, and that starts with the players and, you know, also the coaches,” J.T. Compher said during the post-practice media Zoom call. “It definitely helped us get going a little more today. We weren’t as sharp at the beginning of practice today and it definitely cranked up the intensity as it went on.”

Matt Calvert added his coach’s intensity “was great” and something you want “to hear reiterated from the coach.”

“I felt I wanted to make sure our team was getting out of the practice what our goal was going into it,” Bednar said. “We were a couple drills in…and I wanted us to make sure we were doing that drill with the right amount of intensity and physicality and putting a big enough importance on that drill on the defensive side of things.”

Intensity level is something coaches will be quick to monitor After all, with such a limited amount of time before the team is to depart to Edmonton and compete for a Stanley Cup, Bednar needs to squeeze every last little bit out of it from his players. 

“That was my message and they took it well. I really liked our practice in the 5-on-5 portion of it and also I felt like it carried over to special teams (part of practice),” Bednar added. 

Despite his displeasure with his players’ intensity at times on Saturday, Bednar said, overall, he’s been pleased with the speed and pace that his guys have brought throughout the first week of camp. 

“I’ve really liked the work we’ve done here…I liked our practice a lot today. I thought we accomplished a lot…the pace has been good, the execution is getting better,” he said “I think at this point, we’re exactly where we need to be but we still have a bunch of boxes we want to check off as we go through the week… I’d like to see the intensity continue to increase as we go along here.” 

Other notes and observations from Day 5:

• Maybe the biggest storyline coming out of camp today was the fact that Calder Trophy finalist Cale Makar left the ice at some point during the first session and never returned. No one saw what happened. When asked about his top-two defenseman after practice, Bednar gave us the good ol’ fashioned “he’s unfit to practice” line. Get used to this phrase, you’ll hear it a lot. It will be used by team staff when addressing any sort of injury/illness-related status of a player, based on new NHLPA/NHL safety protocol.
• If these practice line rushes are any sort of indication, Tyson Jost is a fringe player on this roster. After spending some time with Group 2 earlier in the week to then rotating in with Group 1’s fourth line, Jost received another demotion on Saturday, this time centering a newly-formed “fifth line,” which also featured Logan O’Connor and Vladislav Kamenev (a.k.a., two guys that are certain to be “bubble” players at best).
• Today’s Group 1 session was broken up into two parts. The first half was dedicated mostly to 5-on-5 drills and some transitional breakout work. Group 1 then left the ice so it could be flooded and resurfaced before coming back out about 15 minutes later and working exclusively on special teams. 
• I didn’t focus too much on the first power-play unit, rather I turned my attention to PP2, which consists of Nichuskin-Kadri-Donskoi with Erik Johnson playing the point across Compher/Namestnikov (the two rotated in and out of that second point position).
• That PP2 unit is going to be a puck-possession monster. With Kadri on the half-wall and Nichushkin playing the anchor role, switching from behind to the front of the net, and Donskoi between the hash marks, these three consistently created opportunities down low and proved to be a burden to opposing penalty killers. 
• Bednar has been talking to his players and said they want more scrimmage time and more 5-on-5 time. He said that’s exactly what they’ll do on Sunday, but he’ll throw some special teams into the scrimmage, rather than just even-strength work.