Avalanche Room: ‘Concerned’ Coach Going Back To His Starter Sunday After Beatdown

Jared Bednar and the rest of the Avalanche coaching staff will be watching a lot of Winnipeg Jets video over the next week, and no, they will not be burning the tape from Saturday’s game.

You can’t forget a game like that.

The Avalanche were embarrassed on home ice by the Jets, who finished off a sweep of the season series, outscoring Colorado 15-4 in the three games the two teams played. They’ll meet again a little over a week from today. Whether that will be in Winnipeg or Denver is still to be determined.

It was an ugly performance on Saturday by the Avalanche, and no one could say otherwise.

I tried to get into the scrums for Nathan MacKinnon and Devon Toews, but with players packing up their bags for another game tomorrow, there just wasn’t room. Hear what Andrew Cogliano had to say, and read Bednar’s thoughts on the game, as well as an update on the status of Sam Girard.

Andrew Cogliano

Jared Bednar on if the Avalanche should hold onto that loss:

“You can’t be forgetting why it ended up like that, especially when we got to play them at the most important time of year. We’re going to have to remember it, we’re going to have to learn from it, study it and understand it, because we’re going to have to be a lot better than that. That’s two out of our last three games we were like that.”

Jared Bednar on if mental fatigue played into it:

“When we have a game like we had last week against Dallas, and it comes up out of the blue after playing 3 in 4, you’re coming off the road, there were so many uncharacteristic things that we did in that game, that there’s got to be a reason for it. There’s no question in that game that we had to be better, but some of the things we did were flat-out not thinking, because I thought we were there to compete in that game. So that was fatigue. We just had two days off, really good practice…that’s not fatigue. You’re not getting more rest than that in this league ever. You can’t use it as an excuse. I felt like we got out-competed in the first…there’s just way too many easy goals. When I look at it, first period, we’re getting beat to our net, off the boards, you’re getting boards off the boards off the cycle, getting beat to the net off the rush, they’re just outworking you. And then some of the decisions in the second period that lead to some odd-man rushes against, part of it’s work ethic. It’s getting back above pucks immediately…you can’t rest against a team like Winnipeg. As good as we think we are as a team, they’re ahead of us.”

Bednar on if Alexandar Georgiev is capable of leading the Avalanche with the ‘big save’:

“Well, he didn’t make the big save tonight, so he’s grouped in with the rest of our team.”

“Oh, he’ll play tomorrow now.”

Bednar on if he’s disappointed or concerned:

“All of the above, yeah.”

Bednar on Sam Girard‘s status:

“Concussion protocol. I think he hit his head on the ice. I haven’t seen the hit yet. I saw him go down, then he left right after that.”

Bednar on if he’s concerned the team isn’t gearing up when they need to:

“We’re going to find out soon enough. It’s my job to be concerned when we’re giving up goals (and) chances that I don’t like that are repetitive mistakes. Whether it’s mental, structural, competitive mistakes, then I get concerned. I’m only not concerned when our team is cooking with gas and playing exactly the way I think they should play.”

Bednar on why he’s going back to Georgiev tomorrow:

“That’s my decision. I didn’t love either one of them, so we’ll go back to our starter tomorrow. He’s got to get us back on track.”