Avalanche coach Patrick Roy. (Ryan Remiorz, The Associated Press)
Patrick Roy’s getting freaky. The Avalanche didn’t practice Friday. And they only worked through a basic pre-game skate before their home-opener later Saturday against the Wild. But Roy shuffled his line pairings — again.
On Friday, that looked a lot like how the Avs played the third period Thursday in a blowout loss at Minnesota. The Avs coach said he wanted Jarome Iginla opposite Ryan O’Reilly on a top line centered by Matt Duchene and a second line with Nathan MacKinnon centering Alex Tanguay and Gabe Landeskog.
But forget all that.
On Saturday, he changed his mind completely. The Avs, instead will play like this in their second game of the season:
1. LW Gabe Landeskog — C Ryan O’Reilly — RW Dennis Everberg
2. LW Jamie McGinn — C Matt Duchene — RW Jarome Iginla
3. LW Alex Tanguay — C Nate MacKinnon — RW Daniel Briere
4. LW Cody McLeod — C Marc-Andre Cliche — RW Maxime Talbot.
The big change is the bumping up of Everberg to the top line. The 22-year-old Swede, who signed as a free-agent in April, is playing in his first NHL season. But he was a high-energy standout Thursday — one of the Avs few standouts — in a blowout loss at Minnesota.
Everberg will play opposite Landeskog. And O’Reilly, who centered the top line Thursday, will move back to that spot Saturday.
But let’s be clear: O’Reilly “moved” to the wing on Friday because Roy said so, not because he actually played there. The Avs didn’t even practice Friday. So yeah, this is Roy getting freaky, playing bait-and-switch.
The other big change is MacKinnon and Tanguay moving to the third line with Briere. McGinn moved up to play with Duchene and Iginla.
If your head is spinning, just go with it. Ride it like a wave.
“We’re going to try to get three duos,” Roy said. The coach explained he wants to create pairs, in this case: Landy-O’Reilly, Duchene-Iginla and Tanguay-MacKinnon.
“Looking at our guys yesterday, they were not happy with our performance,” Roy said. “And we talked about it.”
