from Terry Frei of the Denver Post,
Before the game, Sakic reprised some of the themes his second-year coach, former teammate Patrick Roy, discussed recently, including that the Avs — especially judged in retrospect — weren't primed for the season.
"I actually thought training camp, the first three days, went really well," Sakic said. "I thought the guys were flying and excited. As it went on, you could almost sense that guys weren't quite ready for what to expect coming into the season. We had so much success and smooth sailing the year before, you could see — I won't say it was a letdown — but we weren't expecting how other teams were going to play against us. The pressures, the expectations were up there this year, where last year at the start of the year there weren't a lot of expectations. ...
"We had a tough start, faced a lot of adversity and it took some time for our core guys to learn to deal with it."
Was there something that could have been done at the time, when he and others "sensed" that reality?
"I went through it as a player," Sakic said. "We talked to the players about it. We talked to the players at the end of last season about how much harder it was going to be. You have to go through it. I will say I'm pretty proud of the way the guys dealt with it. I know it took longer than we were hoping, but you could see the smiles, the excitement the last couple of months, where we played much better as a team, more confident, kind of learning to deal with what it's going to take to get to that next level."
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