Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville said Tuesday that winger Marek Svatos, who hasn’t played in a game since suffering a season-ending shoulder injury March 4, is expected to be in the lineup tonight for Colorado’s exhibition game at Dallas.
“I’m pretty excited,” Svatos said after practice. “I’m sure after a couple of shifts, the nervousness is going to go away.”
The twist is that Svatos ended up with a fractured shoulder in that game six months ago when he took a check from the Stars’ Jason Arnott and crash-landed on the American Airlines Center ice. At the time, Svatos already had 32 goals as a rookie, and that total held up to tie Joe Sakic for the team lead for the season.
“I feel great,” the 24-year-old Slovak said. “I’ve been skating for the last five weeks with the boys.”
As the Avalanche heads into its next-to-last exhibition game, however, the team has other health issues. Sakic, who suffered a minor hip injury against Los Angeles on Saturday, isn’t making the trip to Dallas and will skate in Denver today.
Wojtek Wolski was wearing a boot on his left foot after taking a shot on it against Detroit on Monday and won’t play tonight.
X-rays showed no sign of a fracture, and he is expected to recover quickly.
Winger Brad May suffered a shoulder injury in a fight Monday, and “he’s probably going to miss a few days,” Quenneville said.
Footnotes
The NHL hasn’t officially requested or ordered teams to abandon Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll, Part 2” as a celebratory anthem in the wake of Glitter’s conviction on child molestation charges in Vietnam, but the Avalanche has distanced itself from the song in the exhibition season. In the first two exhibitions, the Avs have played “Song 2” by Blur after goals. No official decision has been made about whether that will continue, and the team says it is exploring other options. Abandoning Glitter’s song would be especially significant for the Avs because the song was introduced to major-league sports by the NHL’s Colorado Rockies in the late 1970s. …
As expected, Colorado returned winger Chris Stewart, the team’s No. 1 draft choice in 2006, to his major junior team in Kingston, Ontario. … After facing the Stars tonight, the Avs return to Denver and play host to the team’s charity golf classic Thursday at Castle Pines North.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
