Unburdened Liles looks for big season with Avalanche

Defenseman has four-year deal, positive attitude

By Rick Sadowski, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 26, 2008 at 6:17 p.m.

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Photo by Joe Mahoney © The Rocky

Avalanche defenseman John-Michael Liles, suffered through a difficult season with Colorado last year, but re-signed with the club in the offseason and is looking forward to have a good bounce-back season this year.

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You'll hear no excuses from John-Michael Liles for his subpar season of a year ago, even though trade rumors could have been a distraction and his potential free-agent status might have troubled him more than he lets on.

"It's always there in the back of your mind, but I just tried not to think about it," he said. "I don't think you can change how you go about preparing to play or how you play. I think that's the biggest thing. I tried not to think about it, but sometimes it was tough."

After averaging 13 goals and 29 assists in his first three NHL seasons, the 27-year-old defenseman's offensive production fell to career lows for goals (six) and assists (26) while playing in 81 games.

Liles was even a healthy scratch Nov. 20 in Calgary after collecting two goals and five assists in the first 19 games, and he eventually endured a career- worst goal-scoring drought that lasted 49 games.

Fortunately, that's all behind him.

Liles signed a four-year, $16.8 million contract in June, a week before he could have started fielding offers from other teams as an unrestricted free agent, and he appears to be a lot more relaxed this preseason than he was for a good portion of last season.

"I'm in a good place," he said. "I'm so happy to be back. I did a lot of things last year to try and work on both sides of my game and, hopefully, that translates to this year."

It probably isn't a coincidence that Liles played his best hockey after the Feb. 26 NHL trading deadline. He scored four of his six goals in the final 16 games, when he registered a plus-4 plus/minus rating, and he followed with two goals and three assists in 10 playoff games.

"Toward the end of the year I felt a lot better, and in the playoffs I felt better and felt that my offensive game picked up," Liles said. "At the same time, before the season, both (former coach) Joel (Quenneville) and (general manager) Francois (Giguere) challenged me to become a better defensive player.

"I don't want to say that I sacrificed offense for that, but I'm happy with my development defensively. I think I made strides. I'm not going to say that I'm going to be a shutdown defenseman, but I'm happy with the strides that I made and I'm going to continue to try to make strides both offensively and defensively every time I step on the ice."

Liles and team management had agreed not to conduct contract negotiations during the season. But as much as Liles publicly expressed his desire to remain with the Avalanche, he wasn't certain when the season ended if he'd be re-signing or changing addresses.

"You have your year-end meetings where you go and meet with the coaches and with management," he said. "You never really know for sure, but I made it known that I wanted to be back here. Francois and I had a great talk after the season, which was good.

"Ultimately, you never know what's going to happen, but that's kind of how it goes. I knew this is where I wanted to be, and it was a huge relief when everything got done and I knew I was going to be back here."

ETC.: Forwards Milan Hejduk (stiff back), David Jones (groin) and Wojtek Wolski (foot) won't play tonight when the Avalanche meets the Los Angeles Kings at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas. . . . Andrew Raycroft will start in goal. . . . The Avalanche will fly home after the game and is scheduled to have Sunday off before resuming practice Monday.

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