Avalanche to hold a press conference later this week

Hockey is over and August is coming, but first we have to slog through the horrific mire that is trade rumors (shudder) and rosterbation (vomits). Buried deep in this Dater piece on O'Reilly and arbitration (which is good and you should all read it) is the news that either Thursday or Friday, the Avalanche will be holding a press conference of some kind.

What will they be announcing? What are they taking questions on?

Those are great questions! ...but we can't answer them yet.

However, what we can do is sit and fantasize about how we want the conference to go, and that's what I aim to do with the rest of these few hundred words.

The number one item on my Agenda Wishlist (sorry, no brains for a profane acronym tonight, my allergies are kicking my ass) is that Dater's conspiracy theory holds and they have a deal in place to keep Paul Stastny. That would explain why they have been talking to the media about a press conference without giving out a solid date yet. We know he's still been in town--

Best night of the summer in Denver....@ofarevolution live on the RedRocks!! @RedRocksOnline @Jason_SPORTIQE

— Paul Stastny (@PaulyWalnuts26) June 14, 2014

--not that being in town means anything in a world where Edmonton fires people via Skype--but they may just know they're closing in on some final details and will be done within a few days. I'd love that to be true, but since it's now been thoroughly Dater Jinxed, I will resume staring downcast at my shoes and mumbling something about asset management any time I read his name.

The second item, and this one should happen for sure, is Roykic addressing the arbitration filing with Ryan O'Reilly. What I want them to say is "we don have any expegtation that this process go all the way to hearing but we still remain a liddle farther a part than we would like to be as the deadline came, and I'm tchure we all remember what happen lass time with this player. We want Ryan to be a part of the Avalantche far into the future, but we have to do it at a figure that make sense for our club." I'd be happy with that. What do you expect them to say about it? Because I don't really know what to expect. All we can say for sure is they have to say something, because someone in the media will ask the question.

When the season ended the Avalanche did not opt to do a "locker cleaning day," so a postmortem from the team didn't really come out. My third item of the press conference would be some remarks from the staff on the season that was--and the post season that wasn't. I want acknowledgement that the defense was not where we need it to be and that Varlamov was the MVP for this team far and away, more than anything else. If the team aren't making a marquee announcement like signing both Stastny and O'Reilly or replacing uniforms (dream on, Cheryl), they probably will start with this.

Fourth and finally kind of proceeds from Item da Turd, which is an indication from the team of what they're looking for in the offseason. That's probably your queue to rosterbate to your heart's content so have at it. Enough ink has already been spilled on the Avs having no depth on defense and poor depth at wing, you don't need more of it from me.

At any rate, I don't expect a whole lot of special to come out of this. Maybe an update on the two unsigned centers, but definitely we should expect a much-overdue conference on the season and playoffs.