Hoping history won’t repeat itself
Coach Bednar isn’t pushing panic button during recent slide
With the Avalanche (12-11-2) destined to finish on the losing end of a five-game homestand and a difficult four-game trip looming, team members on Monday didn’t want to zero in on two subjects: last season and Buffalo.
They didn’t care to compare their current team — 1-3-1 in its last five games — to the one that spiraled out of control at this time a year ago and finished with a league-low and club-record-low 48 points last season. And they didn’t want to talk too much about Tuesday’s opponents, the NHL cellar-dwelling Buffalo Sabres (617-4).
Beating the lowly Sabres would make the Avs 2-3 on the homestand. Losing to them would put Colorado right back where it came from — the bottom. Although the Avs have played fewer games than most Western Conference teams, they entered Monday’s game 13th in the 15-team conference with 26 points.
“I’m not even thinking about last season. It’s irrelevant to me,” Avs center Nathan MacKinnon said. “Each season is its own. That’s something you have to embrace, good or bad, and just enjoy the ups and downs and the many challenges you’re going to face every season. We’re not the first team to go 1-3 on a homestand. We’ll get more than 21 wins this season, I’m sure, but obviously we need to snap out of it and get back to work tomorrow night.”
Avs coach Jared Bednar put his team through a light workout Monday, which included a breakaway challenge near the end. The guys were enjoying themselves,
trying their hardest to put Sunday’s 7-2 loss to the visiting Dallas Stars out of their minds. The Avs started the season 4-1 but lost three in a row and fell to 4-4. They believe this latest poor stretch will end Tuesday and serve as the beginning of a good one.
“I believe in this group,” Bednar said. “It’s about the process for us. We know that. We lost three in a row earlier in the year and everyone was like, ‘Oh, here’s the old Avalanche.’ We proved that not to be the case, and I believe we’re going to do that again, based on what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing from our team. I’m confident in our work ethic — I thought we had great practice today — and we’re a young team. We’re going to slide in and out of our game a little bit. But we’ve got to continue to improve and move the needle, and keep trying to push our standard. Right now, we haven’t been playing to the standard we set earlier in the year, but I think we’re going to bounce back from that.”
Veteran forward Blake Comeau, who will again be an alternate captain Tuesday in the fourth and final game of captain Gabe Landeskog‘s suspension, will make sure the Avs don’t underestimate the Sabres, who have scored just one goal during their fourgame losing skid. They are 1-9-2 in their last 12 games.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re playing St. Louis, Chicago or Buffalo,” Comeau said. “We’re 1-3 on this homestand, and we have to stop the bleeding right now before it gets out of control. Whether it’s Buffalo or a first-place team, we’re going to approach it the same way. There’s a lot of parity in this league, and anybody can beat anybody on any given night. We can’t look at Buffalo’s record. We just have to make sure we’re ready.”
The Avs begin their four-game trip Thursday at Tampa Bay. They’ll play the Florida Panthers on Saturday and then back-to-back games at Pittsburgh and Washington next week.