Ryan Smyth and Paul Stastny celebrate increasing their “Workday Without Injury” total by one
(photo courtesy Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)
Pre-season games don’t mean a hell of a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I’m having a hard time not getting a little excited about this year’s team. Last night’s game was the first game where all the players dressing for the Avs have a legitimate shot of either making the team or, at the very least, getting a call-up later in the season. And while the Stars still dressed a lot of guys I’ve never heard of before (including their goalie), there’s still lots of positives for Colorado.
Ryan Smyth scored what has to be his 17th goal of the preseason. In my grade of Smyth this summer, I said I felt Smytty could get to 40 goals this year. So far, he hasn’t done anything to prove me wrong.
The Avs had three banged up players get healthy enough to make their preseason debut - David Jones, Wojtek Wolski and Marek Svatos. Double Dub and Svatos didn’t make their way onto the scoresheet, but Jones had a goal and 5 shots on the way to earning the 2nd star; he led the Avs with 5 shots and, from the parts of the game I could listen to on the radio, several of those shots were solid scoring chances.
TJ Hensick had a goal and an assist to continue his strong case to make the team. Chris Stewart faces longer odds, but also notched an assist (while putting up 4 shots). And obviously Tyler Arnason loves to check out hockey blogs, as he was an impressive 7 of 8 in the faceoff circle (we won 4 of 5 against Mike Ribeiro - the same Mike Rebeiro who won 11 of 18 against the Avs a week ago in Dallas).
And then there’s Peter Budaj. In the 3 games we have official stats for (neutral site games like the Frozen Fury are teh suck for stats), Budaj has a GAA of 1.39 and a .956 save percentage. He’s given the Avs a chance to win in all 3 games - the Avalanche have trailed for a whopping 1 minute and 32 seconds in those 3. I Believe in Budaj, indeed!
The game report (which includes shift charts) is up. You may notice some changes, but it’s still very much in “beta” - lots of formatting changes to come. I should have the event summary included in time for the next game (ultimately, my goal is to include all the info from each game on this one report). I’ve also updated the reports for the first and second games.
I made it to the game last night. I sat pretty close to the glass down behind Budaj for “two defends” as they say.
The first period was pretty lethargic to be honest. The Avs were certainly concentrating on their defense to start. On the Dallas zone breakouts the Avs had four guys back and one forecheck (ie Wild hockey). Avery had a lot of players distracted in that period. He had a long conversation with Parker. He even did the fake glove drop thing with Foote who wrapped him up, dropped his stick and was ready to throw. Avery acted like he was innocent and didn’t drop his gloves. Later at the end of the first period he gave Stewart a little extra on a check and then Stewart made a run at him and took a penalty for the start of the second. Avery is without a doubt the greated pest I’ve ever seen. With that said it was a good lesson for the Avs because after the break they seemed to realize what Avery was accomplishing and they ignored him thereafter. Budaj was really good, and in fact great. It goes to show how hard shutouts can be because the one goal that got by him was a fluky mid-air tip across the crease that Ott seemed to put in with the shaft of his stick.
The defense was solid across the board. The only weak point I saw was with Clark at times. He looked like he had dead legs at some points. I’m not too thrilled with him as a pairing with Foote. Hopefully when Leo comes in we will see those pairings shift around a bit.
Sakic played the point on the first PP unit and I still don’t like it. He belongs down with the forwards, not at the point.
Wolski looked good and played an aggressive checking game. Svatos is a little off on his timing but he looks healthy to me. By the 3rd period he made one of the Svatos runs where he does the wide stance, in-out move. Ledin tried the same thing with some hillarity but interestly enough he kicked the puck through to his stick, shot the puck hard off the boards and right on to the stick of Hensick for a goal. I’m not sure that’s how he drew it up.
David Jones is worth the price of admission. He was a one man wrecking crew last night. He continues to finish every check he sees. He’s got a Hinote type of motor and he just always skates. Since I was sitting at the end of the ice I could really see his skating stroke and it’s very powerfull. That assist from Arnason was a gimme. Jones muscled the puck from the defenseman in the neutral zone and then outskated him to the faceoff circle, then cut to the net protecting the puck and letting the defenseman ride his left hip. He then faked the shot forehand, slid it to his backhand and slid it farside in to the goal. It electrified the entire building and the bench.
Just an interesting side note on Foote. It seemed like they were doing fake TV timeouts last night. After each break Foote would go down and talk to the refs and motion his checking with his hand and ask them questions. I don’t know what they are talking about specifically but I’d guess that Foote is at the very least setting up the refs for what he wants to do. It’s interesting because you don’t see many players doing it and it’s one of those things you can’t ever see without being there.
I believe the score you have listed in the headline is incorrect.
Budaj’s numbers would not be any different if Frozen Fury had stats since he didn’t play. Raycroft played the entire game.
Maybe Foote is trying to learn from the officials exactly how they are calling things this year, what they are looking for, how they see certain things….I’m sure it helps the officials to talk to the guys about some of those things as well. What the players are seeing, how they see the calls, etc.
thanks - I thought that might have been the case.