Defensemen John-Michael Liles and Ruslan Salei again were healthy scratches against the Phoenix Coyotes on Friday, and Colorado ended up short a body on the blue line after Adam Foote didn’t play beyond the first period. after logging only five shifts and 3:32 of ice time.
“He had back spasms, so he wasn’t able to finish the game,” Avalanche coach Joe Sacco said.
Winger Darren Haydar was the Avalanche’s other healthy scratch,
If Foote isn’t able to play tonight at Los Angeles in the Avalanche’s final game before the Olympic break, it will be interesting to see if Sacco inserts Liles or Salei, who has played only one game this season and was activated off the injured list Monday. Salei has said he would hope to play at least one game before suiting up for Belarus in the Olympics.
Freeze.
The NHL’s trading freeze went into effect Friday at 1 p.m., and teams won’t be able to make moves again until March 1. The trading deadline is 1 p.m. on March 3.
So if Colorado is determined to trade Liles, and manages to pull it off despite his four-year, $16.8 million contract, it will happen in the first few days of the season’s resumption following the Olympic break.
After Sunday’s games, team locker rooms are shuttered and off limits and teams can’t be on the ice again until Feb. 24. The season resumes March 1.
Winter Games.
The Avalanche introduced and honored the six players on the two teams who will represent their nations in the upcoming Olympic competition in the home city of the Vancouver Canucks: Colorado’s Paul Stastny (United States), Peter Budaj (Slovakia), and Salei (Belarus); and Phoenix’s Ilya Bryzgalov (Russia), Zbynek Michalek (Czech Republic) and Sami Lepisto (Finland). In addition, Avalanche 2008 draft choice Jonas Holos, currently playing in Sweden, is on Norway’s Olympic roster. The often-retold story in the next two weeks will be of Stastny’s father playing for Czechoslovakia in the 1980 Lake Placid Games, notable for the Americans’ “Miracle on Ice,” defecting a couple of months later, and now representing Slovakia in the European Parliament.
