Colorado Avalanche: Highlights From Team Media Day

The new look Colorado Avalanche roster got to have some fun with lasers, marshmallows and arm braces at the team’s annual media day.

Before the Colorado Avalanche take to the ice for training camp, they first had a day of fitness testing and media production. Media Day is always fun, especially for new members of the team who get to show off their personalities as well as getting to see their new teammates in action.

Here is a look at the training camp roster. The notable absence is Mikko Rantanen, who is yet to re-sign with the team. Defensemen Ian Cole and Erik Johnson are both listed despite recovering from surgeries which took place over the summer. Colin Wilson is apparently getting double the work as he is listed twice.

Captain Gabriel Landeskog gave his first interview of the season, with nothing but positive words to say about his new squad.

Nazem Kadri was the team’s most significant acquisition over the summer and he was the first player to be shown in what the media team dubbed the ‘laser room’.

https://twitter.com/Avalanche/status/1172181953895747584

Into It or Over It is making a comeback this season. As the same suggests this is a feature where players are given a topic and have to say whether they are Into It or Over It. Here’s an example from last season.

And here is Ian Cole recording his segment for this season’s features.

After shining at the NHL’s league Media Day, Cale Makar is back to do it all again for the Avalanche.

As the two players who grew up together in Winnipeg, Matt Calvert and Colin Wilson look good together in the burgundy and blue.

With Harvard graduate Alexander Kerfoot traded to Toronto, J.T. Compher couldn’t copy answers from his roommate this year. Luckily for him Joonas Donskoi was at hand.

https://twitter.com/Avalanche/status/1172205425409658882

Andre Burakovsky also looks good in the burgundy and blue. I was a fan of Burakovsky when he was still with the Washington Capitals so I’m excited to see what he can do with the Avalanche.

Tyson Jost has a lot of personality and the team always gets great media content from him. You can see that shining through just in these photographs alone.

One of the tasks set to the players was to see how many marshmallows they could fit in their mouths. Of course Gabriel Landeskog rose to the challenge.

https://twitter.com/Avalanche/status/1172225412056772608

Of course no Media Day would be complete without Nikita Zadorov making comments from the sidelines.

Everyone is all smiles which I think shows how much fun they all have at Media Day.

This is a tough challenge, especially for members of the team like Burakovsky where English isn’t their first language. He did pretty well all things considered.

Of course Tyson Jost nailed it.

This year the popular Mouthguard Challenge has been replaced with a Straight Arm Challenge. Colin Wilson is trying it out ahead of the feature being recorded.

https://twitter.com/Avalanche/status/1172254926027808768

And here they are attempting to put sunglasses on without being able to bend their arms. I think Wilson’s reaction to Nikita Zadorov’s attempt is representative of all of us.

The popcorn challenge was a little more complicated. I love the way Wilson keeps looking at Zadorov to see if he’s going to do something impressive again.

Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan Mackinnon seemed to struggle with this one as well, but the resulting photos are amazing.

Cale Makar and Ian Cole make taping their sticks with straight arms look easy.

It’s nice to see Kadri jumping straight in and doing silly things to make everyone laugh.

Burakovsky was paired with his former Washington Capitals teammate Philipp Grubauer for these games and looks to be having fun as well.

Over the summer the Avalanche ran a feature called Sweet Then Sour where Cale Makar would say something nice about a teammate and then Tyson Jost would say something mean (or at least try to – he’s a lot less chirpy when there’s a camera pointing at him). Of course Jost’s former roommate had to give his comments on this whole thing.

https://twitter.com/Avalanche/status/1172277456990089217

And with that Media Day was over for another year.

Colorado Avalanches training camp begins on Sept 13 at 8:15am MT.