Milan Hejduk’s equipment bag was still in transit, but the Avalanche veteran right winger was back at the Family Sports Center on Monday, displaying the bronze medal he won in Turin as a member of the Czech Republic’s Olympic team.
Heck, if the 30-year-old Hejduk plays another four years – and there’s no reason to believe he won’t – he could go for a silver at the 2010 Games and complete a set. His gold medal from the 1998 Games in Nagano, he said, is back in his homeland, locked away.
Though Hejduk didn’t skate Monday, most of the nine Avalanche Olympians were at the practice rink – all, in fact, except for Canadians Joe Sakic and Rob Blake, and winger Antti Laaksonen, who had to settle for a silver medal after Finland’s 3-2 loss to Sweden in the championship game Sunday.
Now it’s back to work.
The Avalanche has 23 regular-season games remaining, beginning with tonight’s meeting with the Minnesota Wild at the Pepsi Center. It starts the stretch run in the No. 6 spot in the Western Conference, within three points of Calgary and the Northwest Division lead – but also only five points ahead of the first nonplayoff team, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. The division winner is guaranteed at least the No. 3 seed.
So the Avalanche ending up with home ice in the first round, or missing the postseason altogether for the first time in the franchise’s Colorado history, remain realistic possibilities.
In this kind of race, a post-Olympics hangover would be debilitating for the Avalanche – or virtually any other bubble team in the league. Even the Detroit Red Wings, who also had nine Olympians (including three on the gold-medal winning Swedish roster) and seem to have a division title all but wrapped up, could slip if Henrik Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom and Nicklas Lidstrom have some streaks of gold-gilded letdown down the stretch. And in the East, the Ottawa Senators – who got off to a terrific start but have been mediocre in the New Year – will be sweating over whether the groin injury goalie Dominik Hasek suffered in Turin will keep him out of the lineup long or diminish his effectiveness after he returns.
It’s not outlandish to wonder about whether a post-Olympic malaise could strike in Colorado, considering the huge Avalanche contingent to Turin – and such overlooked things as defenseman Karlis Skrastins playing marathon minutes as one of two NHL players on overmatched Latvia’s roster.
So can the Avs get their heads – and hearts – back in the NHL game soon enough to at least solidify a playoff position, if not take over the Northwest Division lead?
“I don’t think it’s going to be that bad,” Hejduk said. “We’re battling for a playoff spot right now, and I have to focus on that and try to help the team.”
Said Skrastins: “Oh, I even had that feeling today at practice, that I am back. I think all the guys who have come back will be ready right away.”
John-Michael Liles and his U.S. teammates were ousted in the quarterfinals, the same round as the Canadians. He played six games in Turin and returned to Denver on Friday.
“It’s over with,” Liles said Monday. “There’s nothing I can do now. My job is to help the Avalanche….I think everybody here is professional. I think there are guys who are going to be tired and have jet lag. I know I still have a little bit of it. But the bottom line is to put your mind in the right place and be ready to play.”
Of course, some of the post-Olympics talk can focus on one team and ignore the reality that most teams are in similar positions. Even the Wild, the fifth-place team in the Northwest, had five Olympians: Filip Kuba of the Czech Republic, Mikko Koivu of Finland, Marian Gaborik of Slovakia, Daniel Tjarnqvist of Sweden, and Brian Rolston of the United States.
So every team in the league has had players drifting back to town since practices resumed Thursday.
“We’ve placed the emphasis the last couple of days almost like a refreshing course,” Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville said. “Everybody’s mind’s been in different places the last couple of weeks….Basically, you just have to get everyone’s focus and attention right off the bat.”
Can that be accomplished?
“We hope so,” Quenneville said. “We don’t have a lot of games left. I think certainly the guys who have been here are certainly looking forward to getting a chance to play. The guys who were there, they have to get readapted to our system and our game.
“But they’re all pros. They’re all talented players, so we expect them all to immediately recapture that sense and that feeling.”
Putting too much stock in history can be risky because the Avalanche has undergone such major personnel changes over the past eight years. But the previous two times the NHL shut down – for the Nagano Games in 1998 and for the Salt Lake Games in 2002 – the Avs regressed after the break.
In 1998, when Colorado had nine Olympians, the Avalanche was 29-13-16 at the break – and went 10-13-1 the rest of the way and lost in the first round of the playoffs to Edmonton.
In 2002, when the Avalanche had eight Olympians, Colorado was 33-20-6-1 at the shutdown, and went only a slightly worse 12-8-2-0 down the stretch before losing to Detroit in the conference finals.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
