Question From Brad J.<\/p>\n
How far in the post-season do the Avs have to go for Jared Bednar to get a contract extension? Or do you think he\u2019s safe even with a first-round exit?<\/p>\n
Aarif\u2019s Response<\/p>\n
I\u2019m of the general belief that outside of a major meltdown, I\u2019d expect Bednar will get an extension and remain with the club.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not always that easy to predict if or when a coach gets fired. On one hand, there are a bunch of coaches around the league who are generally recyclable, and there are teams that often hire and fire coaches every handful of years. But I feel like the best coaches in the league don\u2019t get fired based on when you lose, but the circumstances of how it happened.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give you a couple of examples. Remember when the Avs lost to Dallas in the second round in 2020? Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz both got injured, and they had to ride Michael Hutchinson for three games. That was also the series where we saw the infamous Gabe Landeskog sliced knee, as well as other injuries.<\/p>\n
If the Avs somehow fall into that level of injuries and lose in the first or second round, would it be Bednar\u2019s fault? Probably not.<\/p>\n
I also love using Pete DeBoer with the Dallas Stars as an example of a circumstantial firing. If DeBoer lost Game 7 to the Avs without Jason Robertson or Miro Heiskanen last year, you could argue he\u2019d still have that job. But because he won that game and the Winnipeg series, he ended up in a situation where he publicly threw Jake Oettinger under the bus and was ultimately let go shortly after that.<\/p>\n
So, with keeping these examples in mind, I don\u2019t think Bednar losing series X or series Y means he loses his job. It depends more on how and why it happened. <\/p>\n
If this were a decision made in a vacuum, I would say, full stop, a first-round series loss means he\u2019d lose his job. Anything more than that depends on the circumstances. <\/p>\n
Donate to the Colorado Hockey Now Playoff Travel Fund via\u00a0PAYPAL BY CLICKING HERE<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0VENMO BY CLICKING HERE<\/a>\u00a0to help our beat writer provide coverage from road games as the Avalanche pursue another Stanley Cup championship<\/p>\n Question From Rudy Volz<\/p>\n If you or someone were to ask MacKinnon how good his defensive game is, what would he say? If you were to follow-up and ask him what part of his defensive game needs the most work, what would he say?<\/p>\n Aarif\u2019s Response<\/p>\n This is such an interesting question and one that I thought long and hard about how to respond to it. Simply because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s easy to get this type of question through to MacKinnon. I don\u2019t imagine he\u2019d enjoy answering it.<\/p>\n But if you were to get to him and get him on a good, thoughtful day, I would imagine he would be honest that he\u2019s not an A+ defensive player. What separates him from someone like Sidney Crosby is this part of his game. He doesn\u2019t kill penalties; he doesn\u2019t have that same label of being a strong two-way player.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s fine. He\u2019s insanely excellent at what he does. He\u2019s also so talented and smart that I do think that, as the years go by, he\u2019ll focus more on this part of his game so he can have the longevity that Crosby has. <\/p>\n I grew up in a generation where Steve Yzerman went from scoring 50+ goals per year to being a strong two-way center that ended his career as a 3C. I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll be that exaggerated with MacKinnon, but I do think his game will evolve as he gets closer to the end. <\/p>\n Question From briggs1628<\/p>\n Now that the Avs have the President\u2019s trophy wrapped up before the Alberta trip, a fun hypothetical for you \u2014 let\u2019s say that they decide to leave all of the Olympians home for that trip, who would you (not necessarily them) put the letters on? Personally, I would probably go with 84, 91, and 25.<\/p>\n Aarif\u2019s Response<\/p>\n I think you absolutely nailed it with Nazem Kadri and Logan O\u2019Connor. No question, those are two leaders in the locker room. Kadri has been here before and has worn the \u2018A\u2019 in the past, while O\u2019Connor has the respect from his teammates to also be viewed as that guy.<\/p>\n The only one I\u2019d change is the Brent Burns pick. And not because Burns isn\u2019t a leader, but because I\u2019d rather go with Josh Manson. I am convinced that had the Anaheim Ducks not traded Manson, he would\u2019ve been the captain of that team in the post-Ryan Getzlaf era. And given where that team is now, I\u2019d wager he\u2019d still likely be the captain instead of them giving it to Radko Gudas. <\/p>\n Give me Kadri, O\u2019Connor, and Manson. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Question From Brad J. How far in the post-season do the Avs have to go for Jared Bednar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,92,31526,31700,24178],"class_list":{"0":"post-262444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-colorado-avalanche","12":"tag-jared-bednar","13":"tag-josh-manson","14":"tag-nathan-mackinnon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}