Reto Berra was in the Avalanche net against Boston Oct. 13. (Elise Amendola, The Associated Press)
The Avalanche goaltenders at Monday’s practice were Semyon Varlamov and Reto Berra, returned to the Avalanche following his five-game conditioning stint with the AHL’s Lake Erie Monsters.
And as of Monday night, Calvin Pickard still officially was on the Monsters’ roster after officially being sent down on Saturday.
Last week, Patrick Roy had said that the Avs wouldn’t send down Pickard over the break, saying Berra’s conditioning stint would last through the weekend and Colorado needed to have two goalies on its roster. But that didn’t turn out to be the case, with Berra’s stint officially ending Saturday.
After practice, I spoke with Berra, the 28-year-old Swiss who was 3-1-1 with a 2.57 goals-against average and a .914 save percentage for the Monsters. With Colorado, he is 2-2-1, with a 3.57 goals-against and a .882 save percentage, and he hasn’t played for the Avalanche since Dec. 5.
“It was really good for me to play five games,” Berra said. “Maybe also to get away for two weeks. But the biggest thing was to play again. That was huge. I feel really good now after those two weeks. That’s good for my confidence. Now I’m happy to be back. It’s a big difference from two weeks ago.”
Berra said he hadn’t been told when he might next start for Colorado, but he said his confidence is back.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” he said. “If not, I probably would not be here and be back now. I feel really good, I’m confident, I’m ready to go. My confidence is really good. I had really good games here. I played three games in three nights the first weekend and this week we played two games at home. I saw a lot of action, so it was great.”
His first game was notorious, since he scored a goal into an empty net in the Monsters’ victory over the Chicago Wolves. His shot down the ice was dead-center, perfect.
“That was a great feeling,” Berra said. “Every goalie dreams and thinks sometimes about it. In that game, they were just dumping the puck all night and I had a really good feeling that night. I played a lot of passes and stuff and at the end, we were two goals up, so they just dumped it in to me again and I just let it fly. You need luck too. But it was an awesome feeling. . . It was the first one I scored, but I tried it once in Switzerland and I missed the net.”
The Wolves were a bit peeved when he celebrated the goal and if he were a right wing who fired in a wrist shot from the circle.
“I was so emotional in that moment,” Berra said. “I don’t even know what I did. I just saw the whole bench standing up and leaning over, like they wanted to get high fives, so I said OK and went over. It’s a team sport. I went and high-fived my teammates. It’s normal after a goal. Maybe it was not the best thing, I don’t know. Some players from Chicago were angry but after a second, it was all good.”
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or twitter.com/TFrei
