The Avalanche are a quieter team, and that’s fine by coach Bednar

Communication is key, as the cliche drones on. You’ve likely heard this in every workplace or classroom you’ve ever stepped foot in, and from every boss you’ve ever had, who will tell you this as company gospel. There is probably some awful poster with a derivation of the phrase somewhere in your boss’s office, as he/she sequesters away from you and the world.

Like every job, the game of hockey is no different, in that it requires effective communication in order to successfully get the job done. Hockey, however, requires maybe a different kind of communication than what is demanded at your average 9-to-5 desk grind. In addition to all of the vulgarities and shit-talking, for lack of a better term, that occurs in any sort of hyper-competitive environment like that, players on the ice really do have their own sort of secret language we don’t often get to hear.

Given the usual crowd noise, fans and media do miss out on most of that explicit, R-rated “hockey talk” and on-ice chatter…aside from the occasional “wheel, wheel, wheel!” the microphones sometimes catch. And we were probably all a little bummed out to hear the broadcasts in the bubble would be on a seven-second delay so as to keep things PG. But for our guy Adrian Dater — who is one of only three U.S. reporters covering this thing live in Edmonton — he gets the very unique opportunity of hearing all the little uncensored, gory details of the game that reporters and fans will never hear. He gets to hear everything.