Matt Duchene Monday was back practicing with the Avalanche for the first time since playing for Canada’s championship team in the World Cup of Hockey, and he skated at right wing on a Nathan MacKinnon-centered line with veteran Gabriel Bourque.
Duchene also discussed — to a point — the separated shoulder injury he suffered in Canada’s Sept. 13 practice, four days before the opening of the World Cup’s preliminary round.
“It was Grade 1,” he said, and that’s considered a slight displacement of the AC joint.
Several times in the interview at his stall in the Avalanche practice dressing room at Family Sports Center, he repeated, “It wasn’t a big deal.