SEDALIA — The Avalanche intends to stick with goal­tenders Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Fran­couz next sea­son, assum­ing both recov­er from injuries that knocked them out of the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nal series against the Dal­las Stars.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er Joe Sakic and coach Jared Bed­nar both sup­port­ed anoth­er sea­son of the Grubauer/Francouz tan­dem Thurs­day before play­ing in a four­some at Sanc­tu­ary Golf Course as part of Sakic’s 23rd annu­al golf tour­na­ment to ben­e­fit the Food Bank of the Rockies.

The Avs’ two lead­ing deci­sion-mak­ers said Fran­couz played hurt after replac­ing the injured Grubauer in Game 1 against the Stars. Fran­couz, whom Bed­nar said had hip and knee injuries, final­ly joined Grubauer on the Avs’ long injury list for the last three games of the series.

“They both had good years. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they both got hurt at the wrong time,” Sakic said. “But nei­ther of those injuries are injuries you have to wor­ry about. Train hard in the sum­mer and make sure it doesn’t hap­pen again. You can’t pre­dict injuries, but no, they both had good stretch­es and we expect that next year.”

Fran­couz relieved Grubauer mid­way through Game 1 against the Stars, a 5–3 loss, and also lost Games 3 and 4 with unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly poor play. He allowed 15 goals in four games against Dal­las and his save per­cent­age dipped to .808 in Game 4.

The Avs’ sea­son end­ed with a 5–4 over­time loss in Game 7 with third-string goalie Michael Hutchin­son in net.

“He was bat­tling through his issues once he came in,” Sakic said of Fran­couz, who began the play­offs with a 27-save shutout against Dal­las in round-robin play Aug. 5. “He’s an ath­let­ic goalie and he wasn’t able to push. I give him cred­it. He tried. He bat­tled. He just couldn’t do it anymore.”

Among NHL goalies with 25 games played in the reg­u­lar sea­son, Fran­couz fin­ished tied for fourth in save per­cent­age (.924) and was sixth in goals allowed per game (2.41) in his first sea­son in the league.

“You look at what Frankie did last year for the Eagles and this year for us, and how well he played in a bunch of dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions com­ing in — even at the start in the bub­ble round-robin — he was excel­lent and we’ve seen that all year long,” Bed­nar said.

“I think it was unchar­ac­ter­is­tic, the way he played in the series (but) you have to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt. He was deal­ing with hip and knee prob­lems — mus­cu­lar prob­lems that were giv­ing him some weak­ness and some pain and he just didn’t play the way we had seen him play­ing (and) even­tu­al­ly he couldn’t keep going. It was obvi­ous­ly get­ting worse as the series went on.”

The Avs will begin an off­sea­son train­ing pro­gram for Fran­couz and Grubauer to strength­en the areas where the goalies were injured.

“I have a lot of belief in those guys. We’re going to eval­u­ate some things and make sure that we’re doing every­thing we can to keep those guys healthy and get them strong and get them on dai­ly rou­tines, week­ly rou­tines,” Bed­nar said.

Even if the Avs had won Game 7 of the West­ern Con­fer­ence series in Edmon­ton last Fri­day, none of the sev­en play­ers on the injured list were close to rejoin­ing the line­up, Bed­nar said.

Col­orado left wing/team cap­tain Gabe Lan­deskog, who was cut above the right knee by a teammate’s skate in Game 6, would have missed a week to 10 days. Bed­nar said the oth­er six guys — Fran­couz and Grubauer, defense­men Erik John­son and Conor Tim­mins, and for­wards Matt Calvert and Joonas Don­skoi — were “weeks” away from return­ing and would have missed most or all of the con­fer­ence final.

“Landy came in the day after he got cut and he was pret­ty sore. That was going to take some time,” Bed­nar said. “Calvert was look­ing like he was get­ting close and he had a set­back. The goalies were weeks away. Same thing with Don­skoi, EJ.

“When you go through that list, we didn’t have any help com­ing. So hope­ful­ly we can take some now and get all those guys healthy for the start of the sea­son, when­ev­er that is, and we’ll come back stronger than ever.”

Sakic antic­i­pates all sev­en play­ers to recov­er before next sea­son — cur­rent­ly sched­uled to begin Dec. 1.

Foot­note. Avs defense­man Mark Bar­be­rio, an unre­strict­ed free agent who was a healthy scratch through­out the play­offs, has report­ed­ly signed Lau­sanne HC in Switzer­land. Bar­be­rio, 30, played three-plus sea­sons in Col­orado since he was acquired off waivers from Mon­tre­al 2016–17. He saw action in just 21 games this season.