ST. PAUL, Minn. — Avalanche center — acquired from the on July 1 — wasn’t surprised to learn that the Leafs fired coach Mike Babcock on Wednesday.
High-profile Toronto, which makes its annual visit to the on Saturday, takes a six-game winless skid (0-5-1) into Thursday’s game at Arizona.
“No (team) is going to be happy with that, so they’re looking for a change,” Kadri said Thursday after the Avs’ morning skate at the Xcel Energy Center.
Kadri was Toronto’s 2009 first-round draft pick (No. 7 overall) and played his first nine NHL seasons with the Leafs. He and Babcock had their disagreements.
“We got a mutual respect for one another. Obviously, at times, you get into it a little bit but that’s part of being a man and talking about your problems,” Kadri said.
Toronto finished with 46 wins and 100 points last season and expectations were high this year, partly because they acquired puck-moving defenseman from the Avs in the Kadri deal. But the Leafs stand 9-10-4 and Barrie has a team-worst minus-11 rating.
“They got some great players over there so I don’t think expectations should be low,” Kadri said of his former team. “They got good players that can carry the load, that can get wins. It’s surprisingly, obviously, the start they’ve gotten off to … they felt like they needed a change.”
Kadri will again be the second-line center for the injury-plagued Avs on Thursday against the . Colorado, which is 3-1 on its five-game trip and 5-1 in its last six games, will continue to play without five injured forwards in , , , and .
Jared Bednar here in Minny
— Mike Chambers (@MikeChambers)
Avalanche tentative lineup
Forwards:
Burakovsky-MacKinnon-Donskoi
Nichushkin-Kadri-Compher
Nieto-Bellemare-Megna
Tynan-Kamenev-O’Connor
Defensemen:
Girard-Johnson
Graves-Makar
Zadorov-Cole
ҴDzٱԻ:
Grubauer, Francouz
