Avalanche Locker Room: Bednar on ‘Passengers’, Big Mistakes Costing Team

Jared Bednar didn’t name names after the game, but made it known that the Colorado Avalanche had too many passengers on Wednesday night, at least to start.

The head coach of the Avalanche talked about how mistakes hurt his team, but he didn’t think the entire team was engaged from the start. Who could he be talking about? We can only speculate, but those players are sure to find out when he meets with them.

Bowen Byram is red-hot, but didn’t really want to talk about his offense. He mentioned that the team didn’t have their best start in the loss.

Take a look at what Byram had to say, and read what Avalanche coach Jared Bednar had to say after the disappointing loss.

Jared Bednar on the start for the Avalanche:

I think we handed them a couple goals. The first couple of goals, for sure. Two of the first three anyway. And like I said this morning, it’s a game of mistakes, and we made some big ones. Didn’t make a lot of them, but we made some big ones and they capitalized on them. So that turns out, for me, to be the difference in the hockey game. But I do think, as a group, as a whole, that to start the game, they were more competitive than we were. I felt like we had some passengers for the first period-plus. When you’re playing a game like this, in a playoff-style game, you can’t have passengers. I thought we had some of those guys get going in the third period. And I don’t want to put the whole group in that, because I thought we had a lot of guys that played their butts off tonight.

When you’re banged up a little bit, you’re going through it and you’re playing 15 games in 26 days, and you get a chance to play at home, to win the division, I would have liked to see our whole team engaged right away, and I don’t think our whole team was engaged right away.

Bednar on the Too Many Men call that was not made:

He said that he didn’t play it on purpose. That it hit his skate. I didn’t have time to argue with him about it. I needed that timeout to talk a little bit about six versus five.

Bednar on Makar’s read on the shorthanded goal:

I think it’s probably a bad read. He probably could have just come above it, or his route could have been a little bit different. Could have been either quicker to go to it, or back out of it. Guy makes a nice play on it.

Bednar on execution:

I didn’t think that we executed great. Like, we had a couple guys that fought the puck that worked really hard, then we had guys that didn’t work hard enough. I’m more critical of the guys that didn’t work hard enough, weren’t engaged enough, and weren’t determined enough in their game than I am on a lack of execution.

Bednar on Georgiev:

That wasn’t his best night, for sure.

Bednar on the Georgiev mistake on the first goal:

No, it’s not the right play to pass it to the other team. They (Avalanche defender) weren’t there, so can’t pass it there.

Bednar on if the message stays the same with another big game Saturday:

Yeah, no question. Message is pretty much always the same. It’s just that’s a little bit of a heartbreaker, because it’s on us.

Bednar on how he addresses the engagement issues and if the players know:

One on one. No (they don’t know), they’re going to find out, though.