Colorado Avalanche: Coach Bednar’s Policies are Effective

Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar’s decisions haven’t always been popular with fans, but they’re proving effective.

Jared Bednar is a great coach, for the Colorado Avalanche.  Now I know I have not been in the Avalanche locker room or their private meetings, so the things I am writing are strictly based on the observations I have made in going to practices and games. I do not know how he is in the film room or as a person.

From what I have seen at practices Bednar is a coach that does care about each individual player and their development of their skills. But he does understand “if you don’t put the work in, neither will I.” There have been times at practice, and its often. When they will be doing a drill and someone will mess up.

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Bednar will address the player after the drill is over and will often sit one on one with that player and explain what they did wrong and how to fix it. The specific example I can think of was last season with Sven Andrighetto. Sven needed to work on his defense because it was a joke. I remember him getting burned bad in a practice and watching Bednar work him through what he did wrong and how he can adjust his play to fix it. At least from their body movements and drilling.

I think the results have shown for Sven as well because he has improved in that area.
He knows this team way more then we do, so when he does things that we as fans are questioning… I promise he does have his reasons. One that I have seen people question that I believe has worked for one specific player in particular. Scratching someone to prove a point or get them to change what they are doing wrong.

For me that specific player has been Zadorov. Bednar scratched him not only last year, but this year as well. If it did not work in the past he would not do it again. I believe the most recent scratch has been the most effective one so far. Zadorov was scratched from what I can tell due to taking to many bad penalties. He was in the box it seemed every game and in some cases multiple times in a game.

I remember tweeting “Can Ian Cole teach Zadorov how to hit without taking a penalty?” Maybe he did because it seems with the exception of the Lightning game that Zadorov has not been in the box nearly as much, but is still hitting as much and leads the team in hits with 82. Benching does not work for every player but I believe it wakes Zadorov up and makes him a little angry.

Bednar is a calm, cool, and collected coach most the time and I think it reflects on his team. A majority of the time the players are cool, calm, and collected during games. Even the tight games, which is why they have the ability to come back at the end of games or keep their composure.

I think Bednar has done a good job with the lines and defensive pairs as well. He has kept the defense mostly the same and where they should be in order of who is playing the best.

He has done some flopping of players on the 2nd and “4th” line. Keeping the “3rd” line the same.
What he has done that drives most fans crazy is calling the “3rd” line (at least in time on ice and production) the “4th” line and vise versa. He split up the top line as well, which most people hated, myself not being one of them but that’s an article for another day. He also needs to work on the PK and the back door. Maybe change goalie coaches as well after the season, we will see.

There are a few points that Bednar needs to work on just like everyone else but for the most part I think he had done one heck of a job and earned every minute of the two year contract extension he signed this season. He was up for the Jack Adams last season after all.