Jared Bednar & Co. Discussion Thread

[SirLoinOfCloth]

Well - we're not talking about the 1976 Flyers versus the Red Army and the "Broad Street Bullies." Which, by the way, was the most thrilling five minute start to any hockey game I've ever seen. Every Russian was hit on every play whether it was a the middle of the ice or heaven forbid, near the boards where they were crucified. I digress.

Bedsy is very structured. This can be good and bad. (I wonder if Jared has the days of the week stitched on his underwear?) Being physical is a mindset. It means checking hard so a player thinks twice about nonchalantly going into the corner and leisurely passing it out of their "D" zone. The truly great teams play with physicality, skill and finesse. They battle for every inch of the ice and use their bodies in front of the net and wear an opponent down. For too long, Joe Sakic downplayed questions about the Avs not having enough toughness and grit. And I'm a huge Sakic fan so let's get that out of the way.

A physical hockey team will beat a finesse team nine times out of ten. Especially in the playoffs. No one is asking for wild head hunting. But to forget about hitting or that hockey is a contact sport (unlike basketball - by definition, but the NBA lets you play with your hands, feet, arms, elbows and does more "checking" than some NHL teams - I digress again) severely lessens your chance of winning the Stanley Cup.

It is interesting that two of the teams people here fear the most in the playoffs - Stars and Oilers, are both below the Avs in terms of Hits/60.

Our hits per game is 10 below that of Florida (#1) which is significant, but to the teams in the west that we are in competition with:

Oilers and Stars ~4 less per game
Vegas about the same as us
Jets and Wild ~1 more per game

And of the top 10 teams in Hits/60, 6 are not in the playoffs right now, and 1 is a wildcard team.

I think Bednar's distaste for hitting is way overblown here. Sure, we're in the bottom quarter of teams, but the delta isn't that significant from most of the other playoff teams, Florida excepted.

 

[avsfan2189]

We give the coaching staff shit when it comes to our special teams when its cold,

so I'm going to show some love to the coaching staff for the PP and PK

in the last 3 months Avs PK is top 5:

Avs PP is also red hot in the last 2 months:

If you go by really recent as in the last month Avs are:

4th in PP & 12th in PK

Gotta give credit where credit's due, especially if we blame them for when it's cold and underperforming

This team was 9-9 in November and 16-13 in December and the team's now

Jared & co. deserves some credit here too even warts n all in some personel decisions and ice time allocations.

only losing 11 more times in regulation since December 7th is unreal