from Terry Frei of the Denver Post,

They should have left Semyon Varlamov in Denver and also kept him out of uniform for Saturday’s home game against the Montreal Canadiens.

They should have let everyone — including Varlamov — take a breath after the troubling, shocking and disconcerting events of Wednesday and Thursday. Whether that means starting Jean-Sebastien Giguere in the net both nights or throwing the Lake Erie callup into the fire against Dallas on Friday night and then coming back with Giguere Saturday, that would have been a better way to react.

Then the Avalanche could have re-evaluated the entire situation on Sunday or Monday, when at least some of the emotionalism had dissipated.

Instead, Varlamov went virtually straight from Denver District Court to the Denver International Airport area to join his teammates for the flight to Dallas, and barring a change of plans, he will at least be on the bench as Giguere’s backup Friday.

I don’t want to either make this a “hockey” issue or pander to those who want to assume the worst — or believe the worst — about Varlamov and the allegations.

But as relatively unimportant as this is, on the hockey front, do you want a man in your net (or even on the bench, available to be potentially summoned) who has just come from spending a night in jail and who obviously has every reason to not exactly be at the top of his game mentally?

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