MONTREAL — I shot video of Patrick Roy’s Peyton Manning-like media scrum and other cool stuff from the Bell Centre but having problems uploading them. Take my word for it, this was like a Stanley Cup Finals Game 7 morning skate. Roy took a zillion questions in French and a half-zillion in English before the 28 Avs players on the trip had a little hop.
I’m writing this at 12:30 p.m. local time and the Roy and fellow Hockey Hall of Famer Joe Sakic are still on the ice, playing shinny with the assistant coaches and the eight scratches in Thursday night’s preseason game against the Canadiens. Among the scratches are forwards Jarome Iginla, Daniel Briere and Alex Tanguay, defensemen Erik Johnson, Brad Stuart, Jan Hejda and Stefan Elliott, and goalie Semyon Varlamov. Those guys will play against Montreal on Friday in Quebec City.
Here are Thursday’s lines, parings and starting goalie (not 100 percent sure about the fourth line):
O’Reilly-Duchene-Rendulic
Landeskog-MacKinnon-Winchester
McLeod-Talbot-Street
Everberg-Cliche-Maggio (normally a D)
Holden-Barrie
Gervais-Guenin
Wilson-Redmond
Berra
(backup is Will, who is expected to come off the bench)
Roy said Iginla and Tanguay will replace Rendulic and Winchester, respectively, on the top two lines Friday.
Some other items: Briere said his son in Philadelphia who was injured playing hockey is back home and doing well. … I assumed wrong that forward Andrew Agozzino, the two-time defending scoring leader at Lake Erie of the AHL who has played much of training camp/preseason with MacKinnon, would be on this trip. He is not. Neither are AHL-bound forwards Joey Hishon, Dennis Everberg and Samuel Henley, defenseman Duncan Siemens and goalie Calvin Pickard, among others. Bottom line: Roy said all the healthy veterans wanted to be on this unique trip that takes them to the birth of the franchise in Quebec City, and the charter and locker room only holds so many bodies. … Injured third-line forwards John Mitchell (migraines) and Jamie McGinn (back) are still MIA. … Don’t book flights to Montreal with a connection in Toronto. Barely made that connection after spending almost two hours going through customs and security (don’t have Nexus). One of the world’s largest airports doesn’t allow international passengers to go through customs and then to their connecting gates, but rather spits you out to the unsecured area. Despite that, good times in this incredible hockey market!
