The Avalanche is still not talking about the firing of Rick Pracey, their longtime director of amateur scouting. Pracey, 45, was dismissed sometime last week, as .
When asked Tuesday after the Avs’ morning skate, Colorado coach Patrick Roy deferred that talk up the organizational ladder, to VP and GM Joe Sakic.
Rick Pracey.
“I’ll let Joe talk about it,” Roy said. “But it was an organization decision.”
Here’s a talking about the Avs 2014 draft earlier this year.
*** The Avalanche will not call up a replacement for Jesse Winchester this week, even as his timeline returning from a concussion was pushed back.
Roy said Winchester is still at least a week away from returning.
“He’s back to the baseline,” Roy said of Winchester following concussion protocols. “But he’s still having symptoms. In the afternoons, he has headaches.”
The Avs will likely drop young goalies Calvin Pickard and Sami Aittokallio back to the AHL’s Lake Erie Monsters as Reto Berra and Semyon Varlamov return. But they will not call up a Monster to fill in for Winchester, Roy said.
*** Tyson Barrie, whose minus-5 plus-minus is a team low among Avs defenseman, joked/not-joked that Roy did not ask him to fill in at goaltender, but maybe should have.
“I’d probably do a better job of playing goalie than I have been in defense this season,” he said.
*** The Avs (working on corner drills Tuesday) will line up against Florida on Tuesday in a similar look to how they ended a four-game road trip.
“We try to find a mix of speed and grit on every line,” Roy said. Tonight’s lines:
LW — C — RW
Landeskog — O’Reilly — MacKinnon
Tanguay — Duchene — Iginla
McGinn — Mitchell — Briere
McLeod — Cliche — Talbot
Defense
Johnson — Holden
Barrie — Hejda
Stuart — Wilson
