The beloved Rampage take the ice for the first time as a Colorado Avalanche affiliate today when practice begins at 10:30am local time. The pre-season schedule begins Friday night at the Cedar Park Center vs the Texas Stars
Training Camp Schedule
Today through Thursday there will be morning practices
Dean Chynoweth, Randy Ladouceur and Jean-Ian Filiatrault will be running the practices with help from guys on the Avs development staff like Brett Clark, Brian Willsie and David Oliver. Ft Wayne Komets coach Gary Graham will probably be there for the first week.
Friday and Sunday there are pre-season games against the Baby Stars in Cedar Park
Next week will have practices Tuesday through Friday with the regular season opening on Saturday the 10th at Texas once again. First Home game will be on the 24th vs Stockton. Only 6 games total (1H/5A) in the month of October
Roster
There's no official roster yet but we've had various cuts from the Avs and announcements from the brother Komets. Who we know about so far:
Attack (14)
Troy Bourke
Trevor Cheek
Sam Henley
Garrett Meurs
Dan Maggio*
Reid Petryk*
Michael Schumacher*
Reid Halabi**
Brett Perlini**
Alex Belzile*
Brock Montgomery*
Freddie Hamilton
Ben Street
Colin Smith
D (8)
Cody Corbett
Justin Hamonic*
Hubert Labrie*
Austin Levi**
Cody Sol**
Duncan Siemens
Mason Geertsen
Mat Clark
Guardiens (3)
Spencer Martin
Pat Nagle**
Roman Will
* - AHL contract (Montgomery and Belzile are 2-way)
** - Professional Try-Out (all from the Komets roster)
We can also expect around 5 or 6 forwards, 3 more defensemen and another goalie from the Avs once cuts are all said and done. There are usually some try-outs that are not from Ft Wayne but none have been hinted at so far. There are no roster limits in the AHL so cuts for the Rampage will go on into the regular season more than likely. In the past, Coach Dean has whittled the roster down to around 25 healthy players for opening day and carried 22 or 23 as the season progresses.
As of right now there are no official injuries but we suspect Gabe Beaupre is recovering from shoulder surgery and will join the team in the future. Also, Sam Henley was last seen leaving the ice favoring his arm or wrist towards the end of a rookie scrimmage in Denver.
* * * * *
There's a lot to look forward to this season as far as Rampage coverage goes, the San Antonio team seems to have really embraced getting involved with the Avs. Radio PxP man Dan Weiss (@DanWeissPBP on twitter) was in Denver for training camp and the first part of pre-season and the website folks put up videos and interviews all throughout. Very encouraging after what little LEM gave us last year. From all we hear Dan is very good about getting lineups and pertinent information on twitter as it happens.
Besides what I will try to bring here, we have some credentialed bloggers on the scene in San Antonio with the good folks at Running With the Herd (@RWtHLive on twitter), who do a weekly Rampage radio show/podcast for all to enjoy along with notes and observations throughout the week. Also, old friend Cheryl Bradley will have Rampage updates on the BSNAvalanche site and I wouldn't be surprised to get on-scene coverage of a few games from Cheryl and AJ at some point this year.