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Colorado Avalanche Practice: March 16

ByNadia Archuleta|

The Colorado Avalanche have one of their Collective Bargaining Agreement days off today. They’ll likely have practice tomorrow before flying out to Phoenix to take on the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday.

Yesterday all of the players participated in a full practice at the South Suburban Family Sports Center in Centennial. The full practice lasted about an hour. Some players participated in drills ahead of time, and some stayed late — some of them were the same players.

Condor Watch

I wish I could report that Avalanche defenseman Erik Johnson was participating in a full practice. Alas, he is not. He was one of the players who started out with drills early.

After a brief tête-à-tête with the trainers, he was off for the rest of the practice. He probably was participating in physical therapy for his knee.

Head coach Patrick Roy reported that Johnson was slated to return at some point during the up-coming road trip. That’s not saying a ton, though, because the trip spans eight days and five games.

Also on the ice were defenseman Ryan Wilson and Joey Hishon, wearing a red no-contact jersey. (Johnson was not.)

Speaking of tête-à-têtes…

Player Conversations

You hear about players on other teams hating each other or at least coming to fisticuffs. If there are such situations on the Colorado Avalanche, it’s well hidden. During practices, players seem to enjoy having a bit of dialogue.

Early in the practice, forwards Cody McLeod and Daniel Briere shared some words.

Colorado Avalanche forwards Daniel Briere and Cody McLeod have a chat while skating around. Photo credit: Nadia Archuleta

Briere later paired up with center John Mitchell for a little convo while recovering from the bag skate:

Colorado Avalanche forwards John Mitchell and Daniel Briere share a laugh while recovering from the bag skate. Photo credit: Nadia Archuleta

Even the true veterans got into the dialogue. Coach Roy and defensive consultant Adam Foote skated around while chatting:

Head coach Patrick Roy and defensive consultant Adam Foote, together again.

It was amazing to see the two greats together again.

Scrimmage Drills

The Avalanche players participated in many drills. There were clear defensive drills, offensive drills and goal tending drills.

At one point, they seemed to practice their one-on-one defense — or offense, depending on how you look at it:

Bag Skate

Colorado Avalanche players participate in a bag skate at the conclusion of practice.

This is the second practice that I have attended that ended with a bag skate, that exhausting skating drill. The last time I went was a couple months ago, when the Avalanche were struggling. It’s common to ask a team to participate in a bag skate when they’re not performing well.

However, the Avalanche have been playing very well lately. That cannot be the reason for the bag skate.

In fact, coach Roy likes to call the event a conditioning drill rather than a bag skate. It does promote stamina. The Colorado Avalanche have a grueling eight days ahead of them. That could be why coach Roy chose to implement the “conditioning drill.”

At the conclusion of the drill, players certainly were very tired:

Colorado Avalanche players cool down after the bag skate.

Avalanche forward Jesse Winchester, who has yet to participate in a game after suffering a concussion in the preseason, chose to actually lie down on the ice:

Colorado Avalanche forward Jesse Winchester lies down after the bag skate.

Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog also looked very tired:

Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog was especially tired at the conclusion of the bag skate.

Puck Handling Drills

At the end of the practice, Matt Duchene, Ryan O’Reilly, Dennis Everberg and Freddie Hamilton stayed after to work with goalie Reto Berra. They actually did some amazing puck handling.

For the drill, one of the others passed the puck to the skater. The skater skipped the puck over a stick on the ice, drove to the net and shot. He then skated to the other side of the ice, picked up a puck, wove it through three pucks and shot again.

Need I say Matt Duchene was the master of this drill?

The Colorado Avalanche probably won’t hold practice again until before the March 28 game against the Buffalo Sabres.

Next: The Versatile John Mitchell

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