Why, you ask? Mostly, because Joe asked me. I know he’s worked his ass off to build Mile High Hockey into a terrific Avalanche community. He’s gone all the way from underwear-in-the-basement to just shy of dee-lux-apartment-in-the-sky in a short period of time. And he wants make MHH even bigger (but he’s very busy working towards earning his GED or something). Since there’s a lot of overlap between the two sites - in readers, content and editorial bias - so it seemed to make sense for us to pool our resources so to speak. I believe that most readers here are already familiar with MHH and may be reading both sites anyway. For them, this consolidation should make life a little easier. If there’s any ITCS fans not familiar with Mile High Hockey, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to check us out. I’m very excited to help make MHH your new internet overlord. Or something.

I started this blog back in August of 2006. At the time, I didn’t really have any idea what I was going to do with the place (as you can see from my first post). I knew almost nothing about blogging. I just knew I wanted to write (I’ve always fancied myself more as a writer than a blogger). At first, I was aiming to talk about hockey and sports in general, but before long I gravitated towards writing about the one topic that I love the most - the Colorado Avalanche (and hockey jerseys, of course). 640 posts and almost 380,000 words later, I’m literally floored by how many people visit this place every day. For everyone who allowed me to clog up their browser with too many words…a profound thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I also want to thank Dario for his occasional - but always entertaining - guest posts and insightful commentary. You added a sense of legitimacy to the site, my friend, and I really appreciate it.

I don’t really know what’s going to happen to the Cheap Seats. It won’t go away entirely, but any new Avalanche content will be at Mile High Hockey. I’m still going to be working on the game reports - maybe I’ll update the progress on those over here for the three of you interested in that. I’ll probably keep the game list widget updated (if for no other reason than the fact that I use it quite a bit) and I’ll keep the vs last year widget updated too. Some of this may get incorporated into MHH. Or maybe it won’t be - if there’s something you’d really like to see moved, let us know. I’ll still be checking comments here, and all the contact information will still work.

Thank you again for your patronage and I hope to see you all in my new home.

Marek Svatos took two momentum killing penalties (one leading to the first Edmonton goal), prompting the Joel Quenneville WTF face from Tony Granato. But his amazing one-on-four deke with 25 seconds remaining drew a critical penalty to put the Avs on a 5-on-3.

Darcy Tucker also took a boneheaded penalty (3 of the 4 penalties on the Avs tonight were offensive zone penalties), but made up for it when he deflected Jordan Leopold’s point shot past an enraged Dwayne Roloson for the game tying goal. A little later, he was the improbable hero after scoring the winner in the shootout.

Ryan Smyth has struggled against his former team, but was one of the best players on the ice tonight. In the first period he scored what I believe is his first goal against Edmonton (too lazy to look that up, so sorry if I have that wrong). And he completely unraveled Roloson late in the game. Roloson was so focused on trying to punish Smyth and Tucker in the crease that he botched Tucker’s tying goal. It was a good deflection, but Roloson was out of position and that’s because of Smyth. If I’m not mistaken, Smyth has caused Roloson to melt down in previous games; perhaps Edmonton should go with one of their other goalies against the Avs.

Peter Budaj was, once again, sensational. For the 3rd straight game, he got better as the game progressed (this will be the subject of my next MHH article). As of this morning, the official scoresheet has him as the 2nd star behind Roloson, which, of course, is complete crap. But during the broadcast, I believe the listed Budaj as the first star, so I’m hoping that’s just an error.

And Brett Clark and Jordan Leopold both had some cringe-worthy giveaways at critical junctures in the 3rd period. Clark saved his own bacon on one of his, when he literally passed the puck to Shawn Horcoff in front of an empty net. Luckily, he was able to block Horcoff’s shot with the skate, keeping the Avs in the game and giving them a chance to tie it a few seconds later…on Leopold’s point shot.

Two guys that didn’t find redemption:

David Jones, playing on the 4th line, had a big defensive miscue early in the game leading to a scoring chance and then got caught out of position and couldn’t stop Tom Gilbert’s pass to Robert Nilsson on the first Edmonto goal. Jones didn’t play well, and didn’t play much. He rode the pine throughout the 3rd period and in OT.

TJ Hensick also had a poor game, after 3 very good ones. Like Svatos, his penalty in the 2nd period killed some major momentum the Avs were building at the time. He was missing passes all over the place and for the 3rd straight game he got killed in the faceoff circle. It’s telling that he was not used in the shootout but Tucker and Smyth were…

But it was pretty. Roberto Luongo was exceptional, as advertised. He turned away all 16 first period shots from an Avalanche team that was surprisingly…well, good. Many of his first period saves were highlight-reel saves, and every one invoked chants from the 18,630 fans at GM Place. However, Luongo had an equal tonight at the other end of the ice - 1st star Peter Budaj. Budaj turned away all 8 1st period shots that he faced, and the goaltender battle was on.

The Canucks got past Budaj in the 2nd, but they needed a penalty shot (and a *ahem* generous call) to do it. But after Tyler Pyatt buried his gift, Budaj was perfect the rest of the way. He seemed to get better as the game went on and his best saves were among the 9 Vancouver powerplay shots he turned away. And, of course, he turned away 2 of the 3 shots he faced in the shootout, giving Marek Svatos the opportunity to win it with his wicked roofer. It was an excellent game for Peter. Beating a red-hot Luongo in a shootout has to be a tremendous confidence booster. By the way, did anyone else notice all the wraparound attempts Vancouver was trying? I’m guessing the Canucks had some scouts watching when Budaj struggled against those earlier in the year - such as, for example, the Penner goal in Edmonton.

It can’t hurt that his defense is playing much better in front of him. Against Nashville, Tony Granato changed the pairings, matching Scott Hannan with Adam Foote and Brett Clark and John-Michael Liles. And, he seems to have abandoned the idea that of having 3 average pairings sharing the load. In the first game of the year, all 3 defensemen played around 16 minutes at even strength. Last night, Liles and Clark were at 16, Foote had 20, Hannan 18, Salei was under 15 and Leopold was just under 13. Foote and Hannan were out there against the Sedins all night, and I think using them as the shutdown pairing is going to work much better than to spread stuff out evenly. Obviously, it’s working well, as the only goal scored since the change was a penalty shot.

Up front, the Avalanche got a good overall effort. Every player besides Scott Hannan registered a shot on net. Only one got by Luongo - originally credited to Paul Stastny, it’s since been changed to Marek Svatos - but Luongo was, of course, in his groove. Even though they scored just the one goal, I think it will give a bit of a confidence boost as well.

The Avalanche are still in last place, of course (and will still be no matter what happens on Saturday in Edmonton), but they seem to be turning the corner and playing to their potential like they did against Buffalo. And I’ve said it before - this team is capable of being very, very good when they do that.

Joe Sakic missed the game with that bad back and Ben Guite is out with a rib injury. That meant there were no healthy scratches up front. And that’s a good thing, as I speculated Marek Svatos could be the scratch. All he did was score the lone regulation goal and the game winner in the shootout.

• Was I the only one surprised that neither Sedin was used in the shootout?
• The Avs won just 41% of the draws, but they won some timely ones. Stastny was 6 of 9 in offensive zone draws.
• The Avalanche apparently had a 21-14 advantage in the hit department, but it seemed like it was much more event than that.

The Avs take on Jesse Boulerice and the rest of the Edmonton Oilers in Edmonton on Saturday. The Oilers are currently 3 points ahead of Colorado in the NW division.

Mile High Hockey

Avs Talk

Rocky Mountain News

Denver Post

jibblescribbits

AP

Waiting for Stanley (Vancouver)

Oh, and TJ? Good luck with the apartment hunting in Denver.

Bigger recap tomorrow…

Tony Granato said in the above article that Arnason would play on Wednesday. With McCormick returning from his leave of absence (our condolences to him on his loss), that leaves one more forward to be scratched. It won’t be TJ Hensick (or, it better not be). I’m guessing Marek Svatos or David Jones (I’d lean towards the former, as he watched most of the 3rd period from the bench on Saturday).

Before people go nuts with the anti-Arnason talk, I (as usual) think it’s worth giving him a chance. I want to see how he responds to the scratch. If he still plays like a wet noodle after his first healthy scratch as an Av, then the gloves can come off. Until then, I’m anxious to see if the wake up call got through. Here’s his reaction to the benching:

“In hockey, lots of things happen,” Arnason said. “It’s the nature of the game, I guess. What are you going to do, right? It was the coach’s decision. I wasn’t happy about it. It’s the way it goes sometimes and you have to move on.

“The team pulled out a win, so it was good. I didn’t play as good the first five (games), but lately I think I’ve played a little better.”

Asked if he felt Granato was sending him a message, Arnason said: “I’m not sure if that’s what they’re doing, but it’s been a long message. We’ll see.”

I have no idea what that last bit means. I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes on the ice.

The Sheriff was re-signed by the Avs on June 24th. At the time, the deal was a bit surprising for two reasons. One was that Parker had played in just 25 games for the Avalanche; with plenty of other players willing to drop the gloves, his services really weren’t needed by the club. The other was that Parker signed a 2-way deal, meaning he would make less if he was sent to the minors ($500,000 / $100,000 were the reported numbers). And, with guys like Laperriere, McCleod and McCormick expected back, a move to Cleveland had to be in his future. While he probably wasn’t going to have a lot of teams beating down his door with offers, wouldn’t it have made sense for him to at least wait a week (for the start of free agency) to at least test the waters? Was there some sort of ultimatum from the Avs? Was there a threat to pull even the 2-way offer off the table if he wasn’t signed by July 1st?

And then we fast-forward to preseason, with Parker playing several games. I think we were all a little surprised when Parker made the final cut over TJ Hensick and Per Ledin. Hensick, you may recall, had a terrific camp. Ledin’s was not as terrific, but, unlike Parker, he’s on a one-way contract and will make the same amount of money ($600,000) whether he’s in the AHL or NHL.

Why would Parker make the squad over either of those guys? I think we might have gotten an answer the following day, when Parker was placed on the IR with a concussion. In true Avalanche fashion, Parker had apparently been injured in a fight 7 days before, yet no one, including Adrian Dater, knew anything about it. The fact that the Avalanche front office was playing games with injury information wasn’t news, but, in my opinion, the timing of the transaction was. Parker was IR’d the day after teams pared their rosters to 23 players. While the “injury” was news to the media and fans, it wouldn’t have been to the team (or, at least, it shouldn’t have been). Had the Avs IR’d Parker the day before, they could have kept Hensick or Ledin. Instead, a week-old injury is suddenly announced the day after the roster was cut down. Why? My thought at the time was that the Avs were making room to claim a player from the waiver wire (Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, perhaps?). Obviously, that didn’t happen. Perhaps no one useful was waived, or was grabbed by another team. Or, perhaps the timing was just an odd coincidence. I’m pretty sure we’ll never know.

Then, 10 days later, Parker was quietly reassigned to Lake Erie after clearing waivers. To my recollection, there was almost no discussion of this news. Dater gave it those two sentences in his blog, and just one at the bottom of this article on Milan Hejduk. I found a little longer article here, and even that one was light on information. No one seemed to have any information on Parker’s injury. Was he healed? If not, was there a reason the Avs kept him the NHL roster for a week and a half before demoting him? Conventional wisdom was that the Avalanche were sending him down to save money (and cap space), but if the move was simply financial, why wait?

As we’ve now heard, Parker apparently never reported to Lake Erie and they didn’t seem to be missing him in Cleveland as it took 3 weeks for the Avs cut him for failing to report. How was he traveling to Cleveland? By foot? Even on his Harley (I’m just guessing he owns one) he could have made that trip sooner than that. Why 3 weeks? If he, as Dater’s article implies, was still injured an unable to play since the demotion, wouldn’t he be at least expected to check in with team doctors? And, for that matter, why is there no mention of the October 17th reassignment on the Lake Erie website? Geez, you almost get the feeling that the club knew he had no intention of showing up.

So, let me see if I have this straight. Scott Parker signs a 2-way contract with a team that doesn’t need him a week before he could field offers from other teams. That contract will pay him $100 grand if he gets sent to Lake Erie, something he had to know was going to happen. Before the season starts, Parker gets injured but he and the team keep that a secret for a week. The team delays putting him on IR, forcing them to cut one of their players. Later, they send Parker to the AHL in a move to save money, but, for some reason, they keep Parker around to collect an NHL paycheck for an extra 10 days or so. Then, once they finally get around to demoting him, the club they are sending him to gets so excited that they forget to even announce the move. After three weeks, someone finally notices that the 6′5 tattooed behemoth with a crazy beard is missing and tells on him. The Avs cut him. Parker, apparently annoyed that he’s losing $400,000 by being demoted, gives up an additional $100,000 he would have been given to watch games in Lake Erie in a suit.

Does that sound right…to anyone?

Not that it’s a big deal - with Hannan healthy enoug to play on Saturday, this move was going to happen sooner or later. It just would be nice to have a little official notification (which I’m sure someone will point out to me within the hour).

The embattled goaltending and defense of the Avalanche finally put in a solid 60-minute effort. Peter Budaj turned away all 26 shots to record his first shutout since March 6, 2007 against the Bruins - a game I happend to see in person. Like that game, Budaj didn’t have to do everything on his own. The defense was much better in this game and when Budaj did have to come up big - like on a couple of Shea Weber shots in the 3rd - he was up to the challenge. 10 of the 26 shots were on the PP - Nashville was 0 for 7 in the game. That’s an area Budaj (and the entire team) has struggled at this year, so that’s even more good news.

On the flip side, the Avalanche offense is sputtering. For the 2nd game in a row, the lone goal-scorer was Darcy Tucker. And those goals have been almost mirror images of each other - each scored with TJ Hensick taking the puck to the wing (left side against Minnesota, right side against Nashville) and centering to Tucker in front. Interestingly, those are almost the exact opposite of the go-up-the-middle-and-then-dish-to-the-wing style usually employed by Tyler Arnason (see below). Hensick has looked terrific and was 2nd among Avalanche forwards in ice time. However, the Avs have scored just 10 goals in the last 7 games. Three have come from defensemen (Leopold and Liles) and 3 more have come from the fourth line (Tucker and Guite). The have have been 0-for on the PP in 6 of those 7 games (they were 0 for 9 last night). Hensick seems like he intends to stick around for a while. His presence has helped, but the top two lines need to get untracked.

For the first time in 2+ years in Colorado, Sanjaya Arnason was finally voted off the ice (healthy scratch). The Avalanche were better with Hensick at center instead of Arnie and it’s great that Tony Granato took just 14 games to make a move that Joel Quenneville refused to do in 164. I’m really curious to see how Arnason responds to the benching - I’ve said before that I think he can still be a very useful player to us if Granato can find the way to motivate him. For all the knocks about lack of effort, Arnie doesn’t strike me as the pouty type and this move just might be the catalyst he needs to jump start his game.

Arnason is not the only one feeling the pressure. David Jones, fresh up from his 1-game demotion to the AHL, had just 3 1st period shifts on the way to a shade over 10 minutes of ice time. Cody McLeod (5:14) took his last shift at the 14:29 mark of the second (could that be an injury that I missed?) and Marek Svatos (6:07) had just 1 third period shifts and most of his meager ice time was on the PP. He had no shots in the game, and was tabbed for 2 penalties. Don’t be shocked if he’s in the press box at some point during the upcoming road trip.

Some of the low ice time was likely related to Joe Sakic, who left during the first intermission with more back trouble, but I think it’s clear there are a few people Granato would like to get more effort from.

On defense, Scott Hannan returned to the lineup and Granato took the opportunity to make a tweak - Hannan played with Adam Foote and John-Michael Liles paired with Brett Clark. I didn’t see enough to evaluate the new pairings, but the score certainly seems to be a vote in their favor.

• After warning folks about the awful Nashville announcers, I accidentally recorded the Nashville feed. That’s a mistake I hope to never, ever repeat.
• The game was just the 4th sellout out of 8 Colorado home games.
• The Avs improved to 3-1 when scoring first.

It is a crucial time for the Avalanche. Their next 4 games are against NW division teams. Wednesday starts a slow, 3-day swing through Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary (with 2 off-days between each game) and then the Flames fly to Colorado on Thursday the 20th. After that, the Avs have just two more NW games until after the first of the year.

Avs Talk

Mile High Hockey

Rocky Mountain News

Denver Post (with bonus Foreigner reference in the title)

Associated Press

This last one isn’t a recap, but it’s a terrific answer to why the Avs have been struggling

Six-and-a-half minutes into the third period of the Wild’s 3-1 victory, Tucker was called for clipping after he went for a low-bridge hit aimed at Schultz’s knees. An angry Schultz drew a roughing penalty in retaliation.

“My concern is at the end of the second, he tells me he’s going to come and take out my knees, and then he actually does it,” said Schultz, who got into a verbal exchange after a physical exchange late in the second. “It says everything you need to know about that guy.”

“He’s been that type of player his whole career, and you don’t need that in the game. It’s something we’re trying to get away from — hits to the head and taking out guys’ knees. It’s just a gutless play.”

Adrian Dater adds the following embarrassing summation of the Avalanche’s Dick Cheney policy:

When Schultz was saying this, Tucker was headed to the showers, so we never got any comment out of him. But we’ll be sure to tomorrow. Although, knowing the Avs, they find a way to make him somehow conveninently unavailable to the press.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen a lot of those types a hits in the league. I remember seeing the play last night, but had to go back to my Tivo to watch it again. Tucker is definitely going in low on the play. There’s no way to corroborate the accusation that Tucker told Schultz earlier that he was going to go for his knees. I just can’t tell if that’s an intentional attempt to injure or not. But, If it is, they need to throw the book at Tucker - there’s no place for that kind of crap in this league. And they probably will.

Obviously, Tucker has a bit of a reputation for those kinds of hits. In fact, when I googled “clipping” for a definition of the penalty, I found the following wikipedia entry:

Clipping was instituted as a rule in the National Hockey League in 2002, following a low hit on 26 April by Toronto Maple Leafs forward Darcy Tucker on New York Islanders captain Michael Peca. The hit occurred during a Stanley Cup playoff matchup between the two teams, and Peca was unable to play for the remainder of the season. When the NHL added the new rule, the videotape distributed by the league showed the hit as an example of a clipping penalty that would result in an automatic game misconduct.

Here’s a thought: if you are getting penalized for a penalty the league because of you, you might have a problem.