Denver Post sports writer Adrian Dater posts his Avs Mailbag every Thursday during the 2007-08 NHL season on DenverPost.com.
To drop an Avalanche- or NHL-related question into the Avs Mailbag or visit DenverPost.com’s .
Hello, Adrian. It’s really exciting having a chance to write and ask something about the Avalanche. Well, I am a Slovak, so I am really a fan of Avs goalie Peter Budaj (Marek Svatos as well, of course). Is the coach afraid the team would lose if Budaj is in the goal? I think he is on form but does not have the chance to show it. What do you think?
— Milan, Bratislava, Slovakia
Milan – Thanks for checking in from the Slovak.
Gonna have to disagree with you about Boods. I don’t think he had a great year, and I think he’s where he should be right now – behind Jose Theodore. I don’t think Budaj was good enough with his positioning this year. I don’t think he was good enough with his rebound control. I don’t think he made the “second” save enough. He sometimes is glaringly out of position after making the first save. He might slide way out of his crease sometimes, leaving too much net to shoot at on rebounds. I don’t think he intimidates opponents enough. I think teams go into games thinking, “We can beat this guy” too easily. It just wasn’t a good year, and he lost his starting job because of it. It’ll be interesting to see which way the Avs go with their goaltending this summer, that’s for sure.
Hey, Adrian. Just wondering if you would consider Peter Budaj for a “teammate of the year” award in the ways he has handled being the backup this year? Do you get any sense that if the Avs re-sign Jose Theodore that Budaj will want out? Should the Avs keep both?
— Kyle, Victoria, British Columbia
Kyle – Well, touching on what I said earlier, it’s a little too early to tell what the Avs will do with their goaltending. But if Theodore has a good stretch run/playoffs, I think the team will make a good attempt at re-signing him. If that happened, Budaj surely would go into next year as the backup, and it’s possible that, yes, he might want out.
You’re right, though, Budaj has maintained a solid, team-first attitude through his demotion to backup, just as Theodore did when the roles were reversed. So, yes, he would be a definite frontrunner for teammate of the year. He’s a good kid who just has to keep working hard.
Hi, Adrian. I’m just wondering: What does an ice hockey beat writer do during the offseason? (Maybe it’s a stupid question, but I read only DenverPost.com’s Avalanche Page, so if you have articles published all the time in the paper, I’m missing it.)
— Radovan Grezo, Bratislava, Slovakia
Radovan – Two Slovaks in one week, nice.
What do I do in the offseason? Well, lots – and not much. First off, I tend to catch up on nine or 10 months of sleep deprivation in the summer. Lots of 9-10 a.m. wakeup calls in the warm weather. I stain the deck again. I read a couple
more books than usual. I play with my kid more. I sit and watch a kid mow my lawn. I usually take a visit back East to see friends and family. I watch a lot of Red Sox baseball, and obsessively follow my fantasy team.
When I’m back on the clock at the paper, if there’s no Avs story to write – and there are more than you think in the summer months – I usually get assigned several offbeat feature stories to write. They can be on anything. A couple of summers ago, I wrote a piece on unusual pitching motions in baseball history, and got to talk to one of my boyhood heroes, Luis Tiant, on the phone for about 25 minutes. Also talked to Jim Palmer for a while, and that was fun, too.
If somebody needs a night off on the Rockies beat, I’m always happy to do it. Same with the Broncos. I’ll do the occasional prep game still. I always liked covering preps (except swimming and golf). The kids are always excited to talk to you, and you know they’re going to save the story you write on them, put it in their scrapbooks forever. That’s a lot more fun for a writer than having some pro general manager not return your call.
Of course, with preps, there’s always the “What About My Kid?” factor. A lot of prep stories, you get a call from a parent wondering why their Johnny or their Julie wasn’t mentioned. Occasionally, you get called very bad names by that parent. And I don’t envy not having to pick prep all-state teams anymore. One year, way back in the early ’90s when I was picking an all-state basketball team, I got untold amounts of grief for picking one kid as Mr. Colorado Basketball for his class
level, over another kid. I got a visit from the kid’s dad, who told me I would cost his kid a free college scholarship because of my “gross injustice.”
Howdy, Adrian. Just finished “Blood Feud.” Nicely done, man! A little saddened to hear Scotty Bowman’s a gossip … something that didn’t seem to come out in Ken Dryden’s “The Game.” Now to the question: Are you aware of any full regulation periods in the NHL in semi-recent memory (or ever) that have gone without a single whistle? Thanks.
— Dave, Colorado Springs
Dave – Thanks for reading. Yes, Scotty is a bit of a gossip – except that he usually wants to hear more of it than he spreads. I remember him having a lot of time suddenly made available to me at a practice the Red Wings had down in Colorado Springs. He called me into his office and sat down with me and proceeded to ask me all kinds of questions on the Avs and their injury situations and systems and lineups, etc., etc.
Of course, I realized I was being pumped for his possible advantage, but I answered as honestly as I could. Don’t worry, though, Avs fans: It didn’t do the Wings any good, what I told him, because they lost the game and later lost in the playoffs to Colorado.
No, I have never heard of an entire period going without a stop in play. I don’t think that would be physically possible. I mean, it could happen. But at some point I’m sure a puck would be flipped out of play, or deflected out. Also, TV executives would personally jump on the ice and stop play at some point, because they’d need a station break to pay some bills.
With John-Michael Liles’ ability to skate and handle the puck, along with his accuracy with putting the puck on net, has anyone ever considered making him a wing?
— Dan Allen, Brighton
Dan – He’s actually done it a couple of times before. But he would just be too small to be an effective winger, I believe.
Sure, there are some small forwards out there who put the puck in the net a lot (St. Louis, Briere, etc.), but Liles doesn’t have that kind of “background” to do what they do. He’s a puck-moving defenseman, and always will be. He only played at forward once or twice because of some injury situations, and he didn’t do much on the score sheet. Of course, he hasn’t done much as a defenseman this year, either, and it’s hurt the team somewhat.
With Marek Svatos out for the season and possibly the start of next season, what are the chances of the Avs re-signing him this summer? He was fantastic right up until the injury, but can the Avs afford to give him a roster space (not to mention salary against the cap) if he’s already starting the season on IR?
— Emily, East Tennessee State University
Emily – A very good question, and an open-ended one right now. A torn ACL is a bad, bad injury for a forward to come back from. How much of Svatos’ speed will be affected, we don’t know yet. The Avs said he had a good surgery and will recover, but you’ve got to be concerned that some of his speed was lost forever under the knife.
He had a tremendous year before getting hurt, so in that sense he deserves a new deal. But this is a cutthroat business, and if the Avs think he’s too much damaged goods, they might let him “skate.” I guess we’ll see over the summer or into the fall.
It seems that year after year the teams in the Northwest Division are tightly grouped, with only a few points separating the first-place and last-place teams. Meanwhile, the other divisions have much bigger spreads. I take this to mean that the Northwest Division is closely matched, possibly due to the segregation of all the Canadian and previous Canadian teams into that division. Has there been any discussion about “spreading the wealth around” the other divisions?
— Ed Cannon, Centennial
Ed – There has been a little talk about moving teams from one conference or division to another. Remember when the Avs used to be in the Pacific Division, and play teams like L.A., Anaheim and San Jose all year? I certainly do, and miss the weather! But Dallas took their spot, and the Avs were dumped in with the Great White North teams of Canada.
But, I think the Avs will be stuck where they are. There’s been talk for years that Detroit might move to the Eastern Conference (they are an Eastern time zone city, after all), but that hasn’t happened yet.
The Northwest certainly has been a tight division the last few years, and I do think it’s the toughest division in the NHL right now. Every team is over .500, and it’s looking like four of the five teams will make the playoffs. That’s pretty amazing.
So, Adrian, are you scared to cover the Avs these days? I mean, with the way things are going, it could be you on the injury report next!
— Miker, Golden
Miker – Been on it a long time, man. With my awful, chronically bad back and a right foot with no cartilage between the anklebones, I sometimes look like a 95-year-old man walking around.
My back is killing me right now as I write this sentence, in fact. Which means I get to do a lot of comical looking yoga poses at times, to try and relieve some of the pain. That, and spend a lot of money on Advil.
I’m so happy I made the decision to try and squat much more weight than a 6-foot-5 guy should try to do, in college. Ever since that day, when I couldn’t come up with the weight one time, had to roll the 300 pounds or so down the back of my neck and forward onto the floor, resulting in a cracking noise from my back that sounded like a shotgun blast, it’s never been the same.
Adrian Dater has covered the Colorado Avalanche since the team moved to Denver in 1995. To drop a question into his Avs Mailbag or visit DenverPost.com’s .
