GLENDALE, Ariz. — In August, Jared Bednar was getting ready for his third season as head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ American Hockey League affiliate — by then renamed the Cleveland Monsters. They were coming off a 15-2 playoff run and a Calder Cup championship that rated a minor-league asterisk, but the Monsters at least set the stage for the Cavaliers and perhaps the Indians to follow.
Then Patrick Roy quit at Colorado, Bednar was hired, and two weeks into his first NHL season — in any role — he has been impressive and decisive under the bizarre circumstances. The Avalanche was 4-3 after its Saturday road win over the Arizona Coyotes, so at this point, the record doesn’t scream out for attention as much as it signifies avoiding a complete disaster after a coaching transition more awkward than most and in a road-heavy opening stretch of the season.
And watching Bednar, nothing makes you think: This is all new to him …
In a hallway conversation at the Pepsi Center on Friday, I asked Bednar, 44, whether he felt he had put his stamp on this team yet.
“We’re playing the way that we want to play,” he said. “We’re a work in progress. But I think that every team is at this point of the season, especially a team that’s sort of newly formed with some new coaches and a bunch of new pieces in the lineup. I think we’re right where we want to be and now our goal is to continue to improve.”
Landing NHL jobs after neither playing nor serving as an assistant in the league is far from unprecedented, even including Bob Hartley with the Avalanche. Also, stepping up from a head-coaching job in the AHL to the NHL is common. But Bednar’s long prep course as a player, assistant and head coach at the minor-league level — especially since much of it was in the ECHL — nonetheless is striking. And he’s conscious of representing the dues-payers in the profession.
“I take a certain amount of pride in it,” he said. “It’s a privilege to work and coach in this league with these players. It’s not easy to get here. I’m appreciative of where I’m at right now, I want to have fun doing what I love to do, and that’s coaching, especially at this level. But I certainly take a certain amount of pride in my road to get here.”
Players’ comments about new coaches, or coaches, period, always come with this disclaimer: What do you expect them to say?
But so far, the Avs seem genuinely impressed.
“I had respect for him the day I met him,” said Nathan MacKinnon. “He was very clear. There were no mind games. You know where he stands, which is nice. If you’re in the doghouse, he’ll tell you. He hasn’t told me that yet. Hopefully, I don’t hear that, but he’s just very clear and he’s a very good teacher, which is definitely what we need.”
Bednar and his staff — including former Avalanche defenseman Nolan Pratt, who was an assistant with the Lake Erie Monsters last season and was hired before Roy’s departure — now are using Tyson Barrie in a tandem with Patrick Wiercioch. With a new four-year, $22-million contract, Barrie implicitly has been challenged to become more trusted at the Colorado end.
“In the locker room, we all know what he’s about,” Barrie said of Bednar. “That’s working hard every day and being precise and being structured. I’m a big fan and I think he’s done a great job with this team so far. … We’re excited to play for him and we want to play for him.”
One of Bednar’s first major decisions was to keep the captain’s “C” on Gabe Landeskog.
“I think every day we’re working to create that identity and to create that stamp, if you want to call it that,” Landeskog said. “He knows how he wants us to play and he relays that message really clear to the players. I think that’s all you can ask, for a coach to be able to get through to his players and really push us to be better, which he’s done.”
What of Bednar having no NHL experience?
“Any coach that comes into the league has got to be a rookie at some point,” Landeskog said. “It really doesn’t matter to us. We honestly couldn’t care less about it. He’s a guy that has proven himself in the minor leagues and has worked himself up and I think if anything, that shows the type of guy he is and the work ethic he has.”
Spotlight on: Former Denver Spurs captain Bob McCord
When: Saturday, 2 p.m.
Whatap up: Funeral service for McCord at First Presbyterian Church, 1609 W. Littleton Blvd, Littleton.
Background: McCord died Oct. 21 in Parker, at age 82. An Ontario native, he already was a respected minor-league journeyman and nearly 30 when he made it to the six-team NHL with Boston in 1963, and in intermittent stints in the NHL, he went on to play a total of 316 games with the Bruins, Red Wings and — after the 1967 expansion — North Stars and Blues. He won the Eddie Shore Award as the AHL’s top defensman twice, in 1961 and ’67. The brief stint with the Blues broke up what otherwise was his career-ending run from 1970-75 as captain of the Denver Spurs of the old Western Hockey League (not to be confused with the current-era major junior league of the same name) and, for the final season, the Central Hockey League. He helped organize all involved foregoing their salaries for one game in 1971 to help the team during a financial crisis that had the league threatening to shut down the franchise, which soon was purchased by the Blues. The minor-league Spurs were replaced by the ill-fated and short-lived World Hockey Association Spurs in 1975-76. After his retirement, McCord stayed in the area, coaching youth hockey and working for Arapahoe County’s road and bridge department, and at Overland Golf Course.
Frei’s take: A stick tap for the man who was one of the most prominent faces of hockey in Denver in the early 1970s, when the Spurs played in the old (even then) barn, the Denver Coliseum. This is another reminder that professional hockey didn’t begin in Denver with the Avalanche … or even the Colorado Rockies.
