Scott MacDonald
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: