Jared Bednar will not begin kicking and screaming. The Avalanche coach, despite his team’s eight-game losing streak and NHL-worst 5-16-6 record since Dec. 7, will not order bag skates and bench his top players without continuous cause.
Bednar is a player’s coach who believes in individual and team meetings over bag skates — a term coined from players vomiting during excessive line-to-line skating. He won’t bench forward J.T. Compher for what the coach called a “ridiculous” double-minor for high sticking in Tuesday’s 5-2 loss to Toronto.
In Bednar’s three years as an NHL coach, he has never seen his teams in such a colossal rut.