Eurolanche

Interview: The camp & Varly´s injury

The Avalanche world was shocked when the informantion about Semyon Varlamov´s ankle injury made the public on the internet yesterday. He suffered an ankle injury while he was playing basketball as a part of the off-ice practice. According to the latest official informantion from the Colorado Avalanche, the injury is very minor, but it has caused Semyon´s earlier return to home from the camp. There have left two more Avalanche goalies: Calvin Pickard and Reto Berra. Eurolanche contacted Swiss ice hockey referee Michael Roth who helped us to did an interview with his friend who visits the goalie camp every day.

Semyon Varlamov with a bandage on his right ankle. He left Francois Allaire´s camp and fly out Switzerland.

When the camp started? How long will it last?

There are two camps. One for junior and amateur players, another for pros. Amateur camp started on Sunday, Pro-Camp on Monday. It lasts until Friday

Who attends the camp? Not only Avs players? Who else?

The amateur camp has players from all over Europe but due to geography mostly goalies from the French part of Switzerland. The pro camp has also has goalies from all over Europe and world: Jonas Hiller, Semyon Varlamov, Reto Berra, Calvin Pickard and Swiss goalies Symon Rytz and Dominic Nyffeler. This camp is every summer and it has been known that Francois Allaire recommends goalies to NHL teams who attend his camp. David Aebischer was part of the camp before he went to North America.

Do you know their schedule?

They have two on-ice practices a day. One at lunch time, the other at dinner. They practice right after the junior players.

Can you describe their practice? What they do off and on the ice?

On-Ice: The first day were just skating drills. Doing pushes and positional play. Then they also did skating drills forward/backward the full rink-length and coaches focused on details like glove position, leg work and leg position. E.g. whether you're standing up too high or too low while skating and offering up spaces.

The other days were with pucks. They set up several goals on the ice and do drils with angles and fictional positional play. Like: Stay on top of the crease, go in a butterfly and then move right (or left) and then there's a shot coming. The main goal of those drills is not to stop the puck but to learn movements in the crease and to work on details while covering posts.

Off-ice: The pros played basketball for warm-ups, then got on the ice and Varlamov left after a couple of minutes. So he probably injured his ankle playing basketball.

Amateur players and Pros are doing the same drills.

Are there any photos of the Avs players or Francois?

I got one of Varly and one of Berra. But those aren't very good pics. They were taken from the stands and through some netting. But you can identify the masks of Berra and Varly.

Did you speak to some of the Avs players or Francois? 

I spoke to Varly after the injury. Varly told me that he wasn't going back on the ice and was leaving Switzerland. He seemed like a nice guy and signed autographs for my friend's kids. I also talked briefly with Berra, but he didn't mention anything specific.