Avs ‘just trying to work through it’
Things aren’t working out the way Victoria native Tyson Barrie expected when he re-signed
Tyson Barrie knew the question was coming. It had to. It’s on a repeat cycle right now.
“We get asked this all the time. If you have any ideas, we’d love you to share them,” Barrie said in a collected, pleasant manner when inquires about what’s ailing the Colorado Avalanche were presented after their morning skate at Rogers Arena.
“We’re just trying to work through it, and that’s all you can really do.”
The Avalanche were last in the NHL as of Monday morning, thanks to a 12-23-1 mark. Heading into Monday’s visit to the Vancouver Canucks, they had dropped eight of their past nine games.
Barrie, 25, a darting, daring defenceman, is part of a core group that seems to all be in the right age bracket, along with the likes of forwards Matt Duchene, 25, Gabriel Landeskog, 24 and Nathan MacKinnon, 21.
Barrie, a right-handed shot, was a restricted free agent this summer with the Avalanche, and there was a push on social media from Canuck fans for Vancouver to make some sort of play for the Victoria native and one-time Kelowna Rocket, figuring that his puck-moving style was exactly what the club required.
He ended up signing a four-year deal with a $5.5-million cap hit per season with the Avalanche just a few days before a scheduled arbitration hearing this summer.
It’s yet to work out to his or the club’s liking just yet, suffice to say. Barrie, who was eighth in the NHL in defence scoring in 2014-15 (53 points) and 14th last season (49 points) sat 24th (19 points) in that category going into Monday night.
The Colorado power play, which you’d think would have the makings to excel, was 29th in the league going into Monday (13.1 per cent) and hadn’t scored a goal in six games (0-for-25).
“There’s a group in here who are supposed to lead this team to wins and we haven’t done that yet this year,” the 5-foot-10, 190-pound Barrie, a 2009 third-round draft pick of the Avalanche, said from his stall in the Colorado dressing room at Rogers Monday morning. “It’s frustrating, but it’s part of the job.
“We’re in a rut. The only way out of it is to work through it and that’s what we’re trying to do.
“We get a lot of these questions and especially back in Denver. Everybody is looking for answers for why we aren’t winning games. If I had the answers, I’d share them with you. The only way out of this, to me, is to show up with a good attitude and work through it and work on being better every day.”
Barrie did carry a four-game point streak (0-6-6) into the meeting with the Canucks, so that’s a plus.
“My job is to produce offence and it’s coming a little bit. More importantly, we need to see some wins,” said the son of former NHLer Len Barrie.
The Avalanche had to deal with coach Patrick Roy quitting in early August. In a press release at the time, Roy stated that a coach must “have a say in the decisions that impact the team’s performance. These conditions are not currently met.”
Colorado has also had its injury troubles. Defenceman Erik Johnson (leg) was slated to miss his 14th game on Monday and the team is listing the 28-year-old as out for another six to eight weeks. Johnson signed a seven-year extension with a $6-million cap per season in September 2015.