Avalanche coach Jared Bednar remains hopeful that the NHL will be able to complete the 2019-20 season at some point and award the Stanley Cup.

“I’m an optimist,” Bednar said Thursday during a conference call with reporters.

The NHL, along with virtually every other league and sports entity, has been on pause since March 12 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been talk, depending on how the situation develops, that hockey could resume in late spring or in the summer.

“Watching what’s going around Denver and the way people are following the guidelines, it’s certainly going to help,” said Bednar, who is in Denver with his wife and daughter. “I’m hopeful as a society that we’re going to be able to overcome this, and I hope that that’s sometime in the near future. I have to prepare as a coach, I have to be prepared for us to come back and be able to get our team ready to go and play.”

Bednar said the three unnamed Avalanche players who tested positive for the coronavirus have recovered.

“All of our guys are doing well,” he said. “Some of them were doing well even before they had their test results. They just followed the guidelines that had been given to everyone else with self-isolation. Luckily, there weren’t many serious cases on our side.

“It’s my understanding that our guys are better and doing well. It’s been some time now and we’re still in isolation until the end of April at the earliest. If our guys are healthy and doing well, if they have their test results back as healthy and ready to go, then I’m assuming that they’ll be able to participate the same as the rest of our players.”

Bednar said he’s enjoying family time and getting in some work to ensure the Avalanche is ready to go if and when the season resumes.

“We’re basically staying home in quarantine and staying away from large groups, hanging out with the family,” he said. “I’ve been pecking away at some work, reading books, binge-watching TV shows, catching up with friends that I haven’t been in contact with for a while, including our players -- checking in on some guys, seeing what they’re doing, whether that’s phone calls or via texts.

“Some guys are still here, some guys are spread out across the world, and they’re doing the same thing. Everyone’s taking this seriously and doing their part to flatten the curve. Guys are trying to stay in shape and trying to stay prepared for whatever the circumstances are for our return.”

Bednar said that he and his staff and players are treating this pause as a short offseason.

“To be prepared when we come back for all the different scenarios and to get up to speed as fast as we possibly can and playing because these games, unlike training camp where you have exhibition games, these will be important games and played right away. We’ll have to get up to speed similarly to where we were when we left off. Those are the teams that are going to have success.”

Bednar said he thinks teams will need two weeks or less to get ready to play games.

“Players throughout the league are so dedicated and work so hard to stay in shape and train 12 months a year that they’ll be physically ready to go when we come back,” he said. “(Regular) training camps are long and grueling and you play a lot of games and sometimes I feel like they’re too long, that we play too many exhibition games.”

The Avalanche were two points behind St. Louis for first place in the Western Conference and Central Division with 12 games remaining and a game in hand on the Blues when the league hit the pause button.

“I felt like we were a confident group.,” Bednar said. “We were gearing up and looking forward to the stretch run of the regular season and the playoffs. I don’t think that changes now. When we come back and play it’s going to be a different feeling, it’s going to be the teams that can gear it up and get back to where they were for the bulk of the season.

“Our team is a real confident team, we like what we had going and hopefully we’ll get the opportunity to get back and get playing, and close it out.

“It’s certainly a difficult time. Like everyone else, we’re in limbo. The uncertainty of the situation is tough to plan for. The players and the organization put a lot of hard work into the season. You go through the bulk of the regular season, set goals for your team to compete for the division and have home ice for the playoffs. In an ideal world, we’d like to come in with the season and play the playoffs.”

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