{"id":63728,"date":"2025-08-06T23:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T23:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/63728\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T23:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T23:27:07","slug":"avalanche-hire-mark-popovic-as-skills-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/63728\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche Hire Mark Popovic as Skills Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Avalanche have made another addition to their coaching staff on Wednesday, hiring Mark Popovic as their new skills coach.<\/p>\n<p>Popovic, 42, was drafted 35th overall in 2001 by the Anaheim Ducks and played 81 regular-season NHL games with the Ducks and Atlanta Thrashers. He went on to extend his career for seven more years overseas before retiring in 2017. Popovic was a defenseman during his playing days, but has been around the Avs for a few years in a consultant role. He now gets a full-time opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>The native of Stoney Creek, Ontario is also the founder of IGNITE HOCKEY \u2014 a hockey development company based out of Colorado.<\/p>\n<p>Following a tragic bus accident in 2018, the Humboldt Broncos of the SJHL hired Popovic as their director of personal development and leadership, as well as a skills coach. Popovic held that role for a few years.<\/p>\n<p>Popovic replaces the recently departed Toby Petersen, who held the position for two years before joining the Dallas Stars organization as an AHL head coach earlier this offseason.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/paypalme\/colhockeynow\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/CHNS-Tip-Jar.png\" alt=\"Contribute to CHN's travel and support local journalism!\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Avalanche have made another addition to their coaching staff on Wednesday, hiring Mark Popovic as their new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1222,1223,831,47167,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-63728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado-avalanche","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-mark-popovic","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}