Jared Bednar on Scott Wedgewood EXTENSION, Nichushkin Injury & More Before Avs vs Sabers

Jared Bednar on Scott Wedgewood EXTENSION, Nichushkin Injury & More Before Avs vs Sabers

Before we start, we’ll have Scott Wedgewood here after Jared speak about his one-year extension. No problem. Open up for questions. Go ahead, Rachel. You guys uh signed Scott Wedgwood to a one-year extension. From a media standpoint, we’re thrilled because he’s always enjoyed interviewing. Good content guy. What’s it like from your end? Yeah. No, it’s good. It’s I think it’s welld deserved. you know, loved his play last year and what he did and and then this year it seems like he’s, you know, like he come out. So, I don’t want to say taking it to a new level, but I think the importance of him being solid in the net for us this part to this part in the season with Blackie out is is obviously key and not only just kind of surviving without Blackie, but you know, excelling in in that position for us and give us a chance to win every night. So, I think the contract’s welld deserved. Colleen, then Ryan, latest on Val. Yeah. So, he’s he’s going to be week to week. I can’t give you like a tighter timeline than that until we see how he goes for the next like handful of days. I would say like early next week, we can probably pinpoint it more, but nothing too serious, which is good, but serious enough that, you know, he’s going to miss a handful of games at least. Right. Going back to Scott and when you added him and McKenzie, the the conversations about bringing juice to the locker room, just what have you seen in his time here, how has he done that? How has he been in the locker room? Well, I think I mean it’s another guy that loves to come to the rink every day like similar to a guy like Bernzie. He’s got a outgoing personality, so vibe is always pretty high around him. And um and then he when he goes on the ice and steps on the ice, there’s a serious side to him as well. So it’s kind of like the demeanor we want our team to have. We want to be loose and relaxed and have fun coming to the rink, but we’re also looking for top tier results. And there’s a time to get serious and and he’s got a good balance with that. He’s he’s easy to talk to. So, he you know he talks with all of our young guys and older guys, gets along with everyone. So, it’s just I think as many outgoing personalities as you can have in the room and um sort of get that communication started. It’s always a good thing. And so, as advertised for me off the ice and then his play, he’s been exceptional. Erian Cory, uh, I know he played good for you guys last year, Wedgewood, but it’s been 30 something days since the season started. He already gets an extension. Like, how much has this 11 and1 run kind of led to let’s get him locked up now. Let’s know what we have for next year. Well, yeah, I think it probably all everything to do with it, you know, like we’ve got Nabacov coming, we’ve got Blackwood locked in, but um, Nabacov’s never played in North America or in the NHL. So, good prospect and has some growth that he still needs in his game. And when you get a guy that wants to be here and fits in your room and fits in your culture and then performs like this on the ice, I think the natural progression is try to get them locked up. Um, we’ve talked about a lot about how healthy you’ve been, like the top nine forwards played every game, but you’ve also talked a lot about depth. I guess just how do you replace Val in the in the term here? Uh Gavin Brinley. That’s how we do it. You know, like it’s hard to replace guys like Val. Um anyone in your top six, but guys like Val and Lucky, like there’s a handful of our guys, Nelly, you know that they might not be the the top point producers on your team. You know, when you got guys like Nate and Marty, um but they fill a lot of holes and play in a bunch of different areas. So, you know, with Val, it’s power play, it’s penalty kill, it’s top six minutes, it’s, you know, empty net when you’re when you need one and empty net when you got to keep the other team off the board. So, there’s a lot of different duties that we’ll split up. But for the interm, we’re going to elevate Brinley onto the second line with with Nelson and Colton and uh see how that goes. It’s a great opportunity for Gavin. I think he’s earned that and um yeah, we’ll just roll from there and see how it goes and then hopefully Val’s back, you know, soon. Jesse, then Ryan, I guess how do you guys are playing really good hockey, you’ve had a couple big games here these last couple weeks playing against top teams. Buffalo’s, you know, near the bottom of the standings. They played last night. How do you avoid your team from taking their foot off the gas for for even a night like tonight? Well, it’s because we like the way we explain it and the way we try and present it to our team is it’s not about Buffalo and it’s not really about Anaheim or Edmonton. It’s about us and what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to play and you know what can lead us to playing winning hockey and consistently winning hockey and and not only now but the focus on what it takes to like win at the most difficult time of year. And that that’s sort of our focus and our goal and the guys understand it. They’ve bought into it. I think we’ve been a really consistent team to this point and you know tonight’s really no different. You know there’s lots of similarities oddly enough with Anaheim and Buffalo. Like both teams can really score off the rush. They’ve got some high-end talent, some talented shooters. They make a lot of passes once they cross your blue line and get super dangerous. They’re not afraid to try high skill plays, tow drags, challenge you oneonone when they cross the line. We saw that at Anaheim the other night. We had some problems with it for part of the game. We’ve looked at it. We’re going to try and correct it tonight against Buffalo. Um it’s a little bit up and down the ice. You know, can have a good tempo to it. So, you got to be ready to take advantage of the things they give you at the other end. And we we were confident that if we play the right way defensively, we’ll get enough chances to win the hockey game and turn him loose again and do the best we can. Ryan Sam Gerard said he’s back tonight. Just as it a nice stretch of early in the year to get him back and are you anticipating putting him back with Burns or how do you break up? No, he’ll play with Molinsky. Yeah, and they’ll shuffle around a little bit too. Obviously, we’ve liked the Manson Burns pairing. They’ve done a nice job with G out and G’s coming back after a little bit of a break here. So, he’ll go in and play with Minsky who’s playing some really good hockey right now as well. Last two, Megan Bailey. It seems like outside of Taves and Marty, the rest of the back end is also really involved in contributing offensively and I imagine as a coach, it’s not new instructing your players to shoot more, but what do you think boils down to that actually coming fruition in execution? I don’t think it’s anything new for our team. Like I think our back ends led the NHL or been top two in the NHL in in defense scoring for years. It’s just a mentality and a style of play that we’ve developed, you know, and there’s or we’ve implemented. We didn’t develop it. It’s but it’s it’s so hard to create offense nowadays that you need all five guys involved in the attack and you see the teams that are scoring the most. Anaheim, prime example, we just played them. Their D were in every rush. Their D were highly active in the offensive zone. Buffalo is a little bit the same. Um, it’s doing it’s it’s the balance that’s key to us is not just doing that, but also knowing when not to do it and what like sort sort of the secondary plan is to be able to get back and defend when you’re D get active, right? And so that’s something we’re still working on. It’s something we had a little trouble with the other night against Anaheim. D gets involved forward covers and then he doesn’t cover and they’re getting some rush attacks. So, you got to take it a step further and that’s kind of what we’re, you know, working on right now as a group, but I I’ve always liked their de involvement. It’s something we encourage. We try work on it every day in practice, in our drills, and uh yeah, we got a lot of guys that like to get up and go. It’s just kind of just the way our personnel is built, which is why we play that way. Go ahead, Ben. You can see uh Brandon moving that bell on their lineup. The Eagles are performing really well tonight. Taylor gets a call tonight. plan to cycle through some of those guys, give them different looks. Not yet. I mean, like we’ve seen Neielson, we’ve seen Macar, right? Gushkin’s out to a great start there. I’d like to look at him at some point, too. Um, yeah, it’ll just depend on, you know, making sure these guys are getting enough like a guy like Taylor Mar’s development’s really important to us, right? So, he’s come up here, if he plays well, then he’ll probably continue to play. No decisions are are final. We evaluate him on a daily basis. We also want him to get lots of minutes and play in different situations that he might not play here. Um, so yeah, we just kind of go game at a time and see how they’re doing down there, certain guys, and how the guys up here perform and then making sure that they’re all getting the ice time they need to continue to develop. Nice. Yep. [Music]

Jared Bednar Press Conference At Colorado Avalanche Morning Skate Before Colorado Avalanche play the Buffalo Sabers & Scott Wedgewood signs a Contract Extension with the Avs

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