A mentor of mine, Andrew Galarneau, a former colleague at the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, all the way back to 1988 when I first started working in this crazy business, Today, Andrew is the food critic at the Buffalo News.

Anyway, Andrew, whether he realized it or not, was kind of the Lester Bangs to my Cameron Crowe, at least as it relates to one of my favorite movies, “Almost Famous.” I hung on his every word when it came to advice on the written word and loved his true, gritty newspaperman demeanor.

Where am I going with this, on a brief update on Conor Timmins? One of the first things Andrew said was to never, ever use a cliche, and especially never, ever in the lead paragraph. And that’s my advice to all you kids out there who want to do what I’ve done every single year for 30 years – get paid for your words: Don’t use cliches. Little things that you think are original to write, things like “Practice makes perfect” or “What a difference a (blank) makes” or “It’s a game of inches”  – don’t ever use these phrases in anything, ever, other than to mock them. Why? Because they’ve already been written 28 million times already. That’s the point. That’s a cliche. It’s amazing how much you still see them, though, from writers who are paid handsomely.

Anyway, Andrew used to always mock the lead of “The good news is” (whatever the good news is supposed to be), “the bad news is” (whatever the bad news is supposed to be).

For a millimeter of a second, I wanted to start this thing off with “The good news about Conor Timmins is…” and follow up with “The bad news is…”. But I stopped and thought of Andrew and that was that.

So let me just say this: Conor Timmins was seen skating today, for the first time in a while, at Family Sports Center. For a guy who hadn’t been skating of late because of concussion symptoms, this would seem like welcome news to Avs fans.

However, at least one eyewitness said Timmins looked frustrated upon leaving the ice. So, we don’t know whether Timmins is making real progress or not. He has had symptoms since March, when he was hurt in a playoff game for Sault Ste. Marie in the OHL. He was almost back to full strength about two weeks ago, but suffered a setback.

So, that’s all I got. Most Avs fans who have followed the team for a while already know this, but for those who are new: media like me aren’t allowed to talk to injured players. So, we just don’t know. Technically, it’s neither good news nor bad news. It’s just news.

Here’s some video of him when he was on the ice:

Some video of Conor Timmins skating just now @BSNDenver pic.twitter.com/r20oYhMzVc

— Adrian Dater (@adater) September 17, 2018