Pickard finds his groove in bigs

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This article was published 12/12/2014 (4311 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DENVER — You can take the boy out of Winnipeg, but you cannot take Winnipeg out of the boy.

And so moments after Colorado Avalanche goaltender Calvin Pickard finished up his scrum with the assembled reporters at Pepsi Center Thursday morning, he had a question of his own for the Winnipeg media that only a lifelong Winnipegger would know to ask on a December day.

“So fellas,” Pickard asked with a half-grin, “what’s the weather like back home?”

Pickard was surprised to learn — along with the rest of a prairie city hardened to always expect the worst in the last month of the year — that the weather in Winnipeg has actually been weirdly nice the last few days.

It wasn’t the first time Pickard has been surprised lately.

The biggest surprise of all came earlier this week when his head coach, Patrick Roy, informed the local media that with Semyon Varlamov out the next few weeks with a groin injury, Pickard is the Avs’ No. 1 goaltender until further notice.

All of which is the culmination of a meteoric rise this season for Pickard, who’d never played a game in the NHL prior to October and now finds himself the main man in Colorado despite a thin resumé in the big leagues.

Pickard’s start at Pepsi Centre Thursday night against the Jets was just the sixth NHL start of his career and yet Roy — who knows a little something about goaltending as a Hall of Fame puckstopper himself — insists he’s seen enough of Pickard to hand him the keys to the team. At least until Varlamov gets back.

“Yeah, he’s been pretty impressive,” Roy told reporters following his team’s morning skate. “Any time you have a player coming from the minors, the thing you want to see is for him to make an impression. And that’s exactly what he’s done…

“I just feel like he’s been solid every game.”

So, the kid from Winnipeg was asked, what’s it like to get a vote of confidence like that from a living goaltending legend like Roy?

“It’s huge — I mean Patrick Roy having a lot of confidence in you makes me feel good and confident. And I just want to take that out on the ice and play like that every night,” said Pickard.

“It’s great. Everyone knows how good he was and what his track record is like. He’s a great person and I think that’s the best part of it. He really cares about everyone in this room. And everyone loves that and feeds off that.”

Pickard played his last hockey in Winnipeg of any consequence with the Winnipeg Wild of the Manitoba AAA Midget Hockey League before joining the Western Hockey League’s Seattle Thunderbirds in 2008-09.

Drafted in the second round of the 2010 NHL Draft (49th overall) by Colorado, Pickard spent all or part of the past four seasons with Colorado’s AHL affiliate, the Lake Erie Monsters, before opportunity finally came knocking in Denver in October.

Pickard swung the door open and hasn’t looked back since.

“I’ve been lucky with a good opportunity and the guys have been playing really well defensively in front of me,” he said. “It makes it a lot easier on me and I just want to take it day by day. And every opportunity they give me, I just want to keep it going.”

Pickard’s older brother, Chet, is also a pro goaltender, who was chosen in the first round (18th overall) of the 2008 draft by the Nashville Predators.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek