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Colorado Avalanche First Playoff Practice Notes

By Nadia Archuleta

CENTENNIAL, CO - APRIL 9: Colorado Avalanche assistant coach Nolan Pratt goes over drills during practice at the Family Sports Ice Arena on April 9, 2018 in Centennial, Colorado. A year after finishing with a club-record-low 48 points, the Avalanche completed the improbable amid a wild Game 7-type atmosphere in the most unique NHL regular-season setting of its kind since 2010: the Colorado Avalanche defeated the St. Louis Blues 5-2 in Game 82 for both teams. By doing so, Colorado finished with 95 points just a point shy of doubling its total from a year ago and leapfrogged the Blues for the last Western Conference wild-card spot. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
CENTENNIAL, CO - APRIL 9: Colorado Avalanche assistant coach Nolan Pratt goes over drills during practice at the Family Sports Ice Arena on April 9, 2018 in Centennial, Colorado. A year after finishing with a club-record-low 48 points, the Avalanche completed the improbable amid a wild Game 7-type atmosphere in the most unique NHL regular-season setting of its kind since 2010: the Colorado Avalanche defeated the St. Louis Blues 5-2 in Game 82 for both teams. By doing so, Colorado finished with 95 points just a point shy of doubling its total from a year ago and leapfrogged the Blues for the last Western Conference wild-card spot. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images) /
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The Colorado Avalanche’s first playoff practice was a relatively serious affair during which players mostly worked on skills rather than plays.

The Colorado Avalanche held their first practice of the post-season today. Surprisingly, it was open to the public — while regular season practices are always open to the public, playoff ones have traditionally been closed.

Also surprisingly, the practice was less lively than during the regular season. (But now that I think about it, training camp hosts the livliest of all practices, so maybe they get simpler as the year wears on. Teams in the Finals probably hold snooze-worthy practices.) The drills seemed focused more on skills than plays.

Typically when you arrive to practice at the start time, most of the players are already out on the ice. However, today, three players were on the spectator ice, while Samuel Girard was on the practice ice:

The three players were Sven Andrighetto, Nail Yakupov and Jonathan Bernier, wearing his white concussion mask.

A short while later, the players started filing onto the ice. How early they arrived was almost a direct correlation to their string. For example, likely scratch Duncan Siemens was taking a stroll with the also oft-scratched Anton Lindholm in the early minutes:

Conversely, team star Nathan MacKinnon never showed up. (According to Avs insider Adrian Dater, it was just a maintenance day. Besides, Blake Comeau and J.T. Compher also didn’t practice.)

That said, pretty much every defenseman in the Avalanche organization was on the ice:

As you can see, there were almost as many defensemen as forwards practicing today.

At the end of practice, it was the fourth-stringers and often-scratched who stayed late to get in some extra practice. This included Mark Alt, David Warsofsky, Duncan Siemens, Vladislav Kamenev and Gabriel Bourque.

Finally, at the very end once everyone else was in the locker room, Anton Lindholm did a solo bag skate to increase his endurance:

While the players were making their way to the locker room, the media assembled en masse to go back and talk to them:

My little joke related to the current Twitter trend in which you display a before and after picture with the phrase, “If you didn’t love me at my [before picture], you don’t deserve me at my [after picture].” No one got the joke, so I guess we’ll call that a Twitter fail.

Next: Avs Deserve to Make the Playoffs

In any case, the Colorado Avalanche will head to Nashville on Wednesday morning for their Thursday evening game. They have a practice Wednesday afternoon at Bridgestone Arena.

Here is the schedule as it stands:

Thursday, April 12         9:30 p.m.          Colorado at Nashville                NBCSN, SN, TVA Sports
Saturday, April 14         3 p.m.               Colorado at Nashville                NBC, CNBC, SN, TVA Sports
Monday, April 16           10 p.m.             Nashville at Colorado                NBCSN, SN, TVA Sports
Wednesday, April 18     10 p.m.             Nashville at Colorado                NBCSN, SN, TVA Sports
*Friday, April 20             TBD                 Colorado at Nashville                TBD
*Sunday, April 22          TBD                 Nashville at Colorado                TBD
*Tuesday, April 24        TBD                 Colorado at Nashville                TBD

I bought my tickets today for Games 3 and 4, and they were steep. You can get them through the Avalanche website.

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