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Compher to join Duchene, Pickard for World Championships |
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Rick Sadowski
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Avalanche prospect J.T. Compher was named Tuesday to Team USA for the IIHF World Championships that begin next month.
Center Matt Duchene and goalie Calvin Pickard were named on Monday to Canada's roster.
Goalie Semyon Varlamov has said he will play for Russia, and several other Avalanche players are expected to play in the tournament, which runs May 6-22 in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Duchene played in 76 games this season and led the Avalanche in scoring with 59 points, including a career-high 30 goals, and a 57.9 faceoff percentage. He became the first Colorado player to score 30 goals since Joe Sakic (36) and Milan Hejduk (35) in 2006-07.
Pickard played in 20 games with the Avalanche and went 7-6-1 with his first NHL shutout, a 2.56 goals-against average and .922 save percentage. He played in 21 games with the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL with a 9-8-4 record, one shutout, a 2.75 average and .917 save percentage.
Compher, a forward whose rights were acquired from Buffalo last summer as part of the Ryan O'Reilly trade, was captain of the University of Michigan this year as a junior and a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, which is awarded to the NCAA player of the year.
Compher had 16 goals, 47 assists and a plus/minus rating of plus-35 in 38 games with the Wolverines.
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As much as he appreciates representing Canada again, Duchene would obviously rather be preparing for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
"We're done too early again this year," he said over the weekend. "None of us are happy. It's depressing. I think we really thought we were a team that could compete if we got in. We didn't play well enough down the stretch and consistently enough. When we play the way we can play, we're a playoff team, but we just didn't do it enough to finish the season off."
Duchene said late-season home losses to Philadelphia and Minnesota changed the team's mentality. The Avalanche lost eight of their final nine games, the last six in a row.
"I think we counted ourselves out of it rather than staying with it and just making sure that we kept going," he said. "We have got to make the playoffs and we didn't do it, we didn't get the job done. To a man we just didn't have quite enough.
"It sucks, it's a terrible feeling, there's nothing good for me right now. I'm sitting here trying to think of something good to think about and it's pretty hard. I've always tried to be a positive guy, but it's hard to be positive now. A lot to think about this summer, a lot of work to do."
Duchene did allow feeling good about reaching the 30-goal mark for the first time in his seven-season NHL career.
"It's something I hadn't been to before, but I wanted to help this team win," he said. "I don't think we ever believed we'd be in this position, and that makes it even harder. When you know it's kind of coming or you have to put a miracle together to get in -- kind of like last year when we knew we had to do something special to get in and we played pretty well and just couldn't get there.
"This year we had a chance and we kind of blew it."
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