Talent gets second, and sometimes third and fourth, chances.
Former Blackhawks center Tyler Arnason has talent; that has never been disputed. But whether it has been Brian Sutter, Trent Yawney or Bryan Murray, no coach in the NHL has found the key to unlock that talent on a nightly basis.
Facing his former team for the first time as the Hawks finished a short two-game trip Monday night, Arnason scored Colorado’s second goal in the Avalanche’s 5-3 loss. He also had two assists, but Martin Lapointe’s goal with 14 minutes 34 seconds to go won it for the Hawks.
“It’s the first time I’ll be facing a team I played for,” Arnason said before the game, in which he beat Nikolai Khabibulin with 2:58 left in the second period. “I don’t know how I’ll feel.”
The Ottawa Senators acquired Arnason from the Hawks at the trade deadline but then benched him for the entire playoffs. After Ottawa allowed him to become an unrestricted free agent, Arnason not only landed on his feet with the Avalanche but signed a one-year, $950,000 contract on the first day of the free-agent season.
Now Colorado coach Joel Quenneville is the latest to try to find the answer that has plagued three coaches before him, and he already is sounding a familiar refrain.
After Arnason scored his first goal since February in Colorado’s loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, Quenneville said Monday that Arnason “every shift has to bring it. That’s something we’re looking for.”
“It” is the same thing the Hawks and Senators were looking for on a regular basis–effort, hustle, a pulse.
In a sport that thrives on emotion, passion and whipping one’s self into some sort of fury, Arnason is the laid-back surfer type who seems to ride the waves in whatever direction they take him.
That would be acceptable if he were producing the kind of points his talent would suggest. Be in his five years in the NHL, he hasn’t.
“At some point in his career, he has to assume more responsibility,” Quenneville said.
Colorado is hoping that point is now, and if it is to make the postseason, it may depend on Arnason.
The Avalanche has tabbed Arnason as its second center behind Joe Sakic. As long as Sakic, in his 18th NHL season, stays healthy, that role may suit Arnason. But Arnason still may have to top his career-best 55 points to make the investment profitable.
Arnason said he needed a fresh start after spending the first four years of his career in the Hawks organization and then a disappointing brief stretch in Ottawa.
“It was time to move on [from the Hawks],” Arnason said. “The relationship was irreconcilable.”
Arnason was involved with Theo Fleury in the Columbus strip-club incident in January 2003, and he was challenged to a fight in a Nashville bar by then-coach Sutter late in the 2004 season.
One-timers
Lapointe’s power-play goal late in the first period Monday snapped an 0-for-14 stretch for the Hawks. Lasse Kukkonen added another as the Hawks led 2-0 after the first period with six power plays. And Radim Vrbara scored on the power play for a 3-0 edge in the second. . . . Denis Arkhipov is the latest to find a seat in the press box as a healthy scratch. Arkhipov played just 5 minutes 34 seconds Saturday in St. Louis. “He hasn’t competed hard enough,” Yawney said. . . . Matt Keith was in the lineup for the first time this season.
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rfoltman@tribune.com
