 |
Welcome Back To Colorado
Skratch! Stephine Chavez (HV) As Karlis does every summer, he ventured back to Riga, his home town in
Latvia. He has a beautiful home near a lake there with his wife and
their
lovely daughter, Karolina. Karlis and his family had a very enjoyable
summer
in Riga and now look forward to purchasing a home in Colorado since
Karlis
has signed a multi-year deal with the Colorado Avlanche which will keep
him
in Denver for three more seasons. Karlis looks forward to improving
his skills with this organization and continuing to focus on being the
best
player he can be in the years to come.
Over the summer, he had surgery on one of his knees to repair a torn
meniscus.
Surgery went well as did recovery. After a week he was walking and
feeling
good. He played a lot of basketball and soccer this summer and spent
a lot of quality time with his family.
Skrastins arrived back in Denver, Colorado for training camp and began
his
usual regiimen with the rest of the team.
On the arrivals of potential new teammates and the departures of old
teammates,
Skrastins has a bit to say.
While he is sad to see some of the veterans of the team
leave like Rob Blake, Danny Hinote and Alex Tangay, he is impressed
with the
new talent of former University Of Denver player (C), Paul Stasny, who
has been
scoring in recent preseason games- twice in shootouts against fan
favorite
rival Detroit to help the Avs win.
Skrastins says, "Stasny is real smart; he's gonna step up and be one of
the best
for sure." Also, Skrastins mentioned he believes that it being Wojtek
Wolski's (LW)
second year, he thinks he will be a big player this year for the team.
"Wolski is great on powerplay." says Skrastins.
Skrastins feels like the preseason games are going well so far. He
says the team
is giving the fans great games thus far they look forward to playing
more
intense games in the regular season.
On a sidenote: Going into the regular 2006/07 season,
Skrastins has now played in 433 straight games,
the longest active streak in the NHL and the second longest streak
by a defenseman in NHL history. Thus he is dubbed THE IRONMAN.
Currently Skrastins is wearing the letter "A" on his sweater so we
congratulate him for
being chosen as an Assistant Captain for the team. We do not know if
this is
a permanent fixture or for preseason only so we will wait for regular
season to address it further. It is quite an honor nonetheless.
Congrats Karlis and best wishes in 2006/07 season!
|
