"I like his size, I like his physicality, he finishes his checks," Roy said after practice Thursday. "I love the fact defensively that he's very reliable, he'll block shots. The part that I was hoping to see from him playing in the minors all year was to get some confidence offensively. He's starting now to challenge D's. He had a one-on-one where he took a nice shot. He went around on that (third-period Mitchell) goal that was disallowed. I just feel he's improved a lot in the last five or six games. I'm very pleased with him.
"He was not supposed to play (in Colorado) this year. He was supposed to be just a call-up. Now he's playing a lot of games and I think he'll benefit from that."