Practice notebook: Vegas, baby, and will Zadorov be a healthy scratch?

Just wrapped up here at Family Sports Center, with the Avalanche newly practiced and about to head to the airport for the short flight to LAS VEGAS! Roulette wheels, all-night poker and blackjack, Britney Spears shows and…no, not quite.

This is a BUSINESS trip, folks. The Avs said all the right things before leaving for Vegas, where they will play the red-hot, 7-1 Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena.

If this were the good old days, you better believe there would be some partying going on in Vegas involving hockey players. The NHL players of the past hit the bars hard back in the day. Partially, that was because teams would have to stay overnight after games, because there were no charter planes yet. Players are always wired after games, needing time to unwind. They did so at bars back in the day and slept it off on the plane ride the next morning.

But teams almost never stay overnight anymore after a game on the road. They head immediately to the airport to their charter plane, so that eliminates that potential distraction. But the bigger reasons why players just don’t go out carousing much anymore are, 1) They just don’t abuse their bodies anymore, knowing they have to be in tip-top shape or else they can quickly lose their job and 2) Social media. Any player caught doing anything out in public now is subject to some random person snapping a photo of it and sending it to TMZ or posting it on Twitter for everyone to see.

“Guys take care of themselves so well now, it doesn’t really matter where you’re at,” Erik Johnson said. “There’s times you can have your fun, for sure. We get four days off a month and those days you spend how you want. But these days, it’s a 12-month commitment to be a hockey player. There’s always time to have fun and unwind from the game, but with the way guys take care of their bodies now and do everything they can to get that edge, you’re going to be out of the league if you don’t keep up.”

Hardcore fans of the Avs already know: If any team should be used to going to Vegas, it’s the Colorado Avalanche. For many years, they played preseason “Frozen Fury” games there against the Los Angeles Kings. And, they usually had one or two off nights there before the actual game. But I never remember much carousing by anyone in the years I was there too, covering those games.

Would you see some players sitting at a card table sometimes? Sure. But I never saw anyone stumbling around the Strip at 4 a.m. looking like an extra from “Hangover.” No matter where they are now, the routine for hockey players almost always goes like this: Get in to the city the night before a little before dinner time, check in to the hotel, then go out to dinner in little groups (or sometimes one huge group) at some fancy steakhouse. Dinner over, cab back to the hotel and in bed usually no later than 11. That’s the life.

“All we do on the road is eat, sleep and play,” Johnson said. “We’re pretty boring.”

NOTEBOOK

• Nikita Zadorov may be a healthy scratch for Friday’s game. He was given a bag skate at the end of practice, along with countryman Andrei Mironov, and Jared Bednar said he may indeed scratch Zadorov. Patrik Nemeth returned to practice and has been cleared to play, so it’ll be interesting to see what Bednar decides. But it sure seems like Zads will be scratched for a second time on the year.
• Semyon Varlamov will start in goal.
• Bednar said J.T. Compher, skating daily, could return in 2-3 weeks.
• Why is it an afternoon game in Vegas? Because, Friday is “Nevada Day”, a state holiday.
• BSN Denver’s A.J. Haefele is in Vegas, so check out the site for on-the-scene game coverage.
• Here’s some video of Zadorov, on the left, and Mironov doing that bag skate: