Around the rinks on a Sunday …

Any negotiations between Paul Stastny and the Avalanche are unlikely to start before the 20th of this month. The agent for Stastny, Matt Keator, has been in no rush.

At the NHL trade deadline, the Avs were interested in hammering out an extension for Stastny, but Keator and Stastny wanted to wait. Now, they want to wait until the final days before free agency arrives to seriously talk, probably to get the best leverage they can on a new contract.

Despite the seeming hardball tactics, the Avs believe there is reasonable optimism that a deal can be struck with their 28-year-old center. We’ll see.

Junior achievement. Youth hockey is booming here. Parents of top young players are moving to the area to enroll them in school and for the opportunity to play for some of the top club teams, led by Angelo Ricci’s Colorado Thunderbirds.

Ricci’s goal is to bring a United States Hockey League team here someday. The USHL is the top junior league in the U.S., and that’s one thing Colorado has always lacked. We have plenty of good hockey besides the Avalanche (Cutthroats, Eagles and college teams), but a good junior team here would add a nice dimension.

That probably would entail a new building, something in the 5,000-seat range, an arena just the right size for good junior hockey. The city needs a financial heavy hitter to make that happen. Are you reading, Stan Kroenke?

On the Rangers. Watching Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Rangers and Kings, my overriding feeling was that the Rangers blew their only chance to win the series. I know it was only one game, but the Kings came back to win on a night they weren’t at their best. I see Darryl Sutter getting his defense to clamp down on the Rangers a lot more now, after his team was let off the hook.

Rick Nash has been invisible for most of this postseason, scoring only three goals in his first 21 playoff games for New York.

Conn artist. If the Kings win the Stanley Cup, Anze Kopitar has to be the favorite to win the Conn Smythe. His 24 points led all playoff scorers entering Saturday’s Game 2 of the Finals. How hard do the Ottawa Senators kick themselves every day when they see Kopitar? Ottawa had the ninth pick in the 2005 draft, with Kopitar still available. Instead, the Senators chose defenseman Brian Lee, who played a few years of mediocre hockey for them before being sent to the minors.

Jim-dandy GM? No. Consider me underwhelmed by the news of Jim Rutherford becoming the new general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Rutherford’s Carolina Hurricanes missed the playoffs seven of the past eight seasons. Yes, they won the Stanley Cup in 2006. But it’s been mostly a mess there since. The NHL, like a lot of corporate America, is an easy place to fail upward.

Rutherford has “tired retread hire” written all over him. How about thinking a little outside the box, Pittsburgh? How about hiring NBC analyst Pierre McGuire, who really wants to be back in the game?

Adrian Dater: adater@denverpost.com or twitter.com/adater