The Colorado Avalanche are coming off one of their most embarrassing and “unacceptable” losses in recent memory (according to Nathan Mackinnon), and they will look to right the ship against a very talented New Jersey Devils team that is missing its most talented players.
Colorado Avalanche
On Saturday night, the Avs laid an egg against white-hot Vegas in what was their biggest game of the season to date. After playing a solid first period and giving up an unlucky goal after Cale Makar caught an edge, everything fell apart in the second. The Avs couldn’t stop turning over the puck and Vegas made them pay practically every time they did so.
Valeri Nichushkin had perhaps his worst game ever as an Av, committing multiple inexcusable turnovers and he was demoted from the second line before the night was over. Almost no one played well against Vegas, and you can be sure that the leaders in that locker room have challenged the entire team to prove that the result on Saturday night was a fluke and not a harbinger of things to come.
#NHL GameScore Impact Card for Colorado Avalanche on 2023-11-04:#GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/JsH26SREZR
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) November 5, 2023
After the Avs lost two in a row on the road by a combined score of 8-0 last week, Jared Bednar shuffled the lineup a little, benching Tomas Tatar and Jonathan Drouin in favor of Riley Tufte and Kurtis MacDermid. It’s quite possible he does this again after getting boat raced on Saturday night, so the lineup going into tonight is as big of a question mark as it has been all year.
It’s exceedingly likely that if the Avs start out slow tonight, the second period will bring different line combinations than the first. Fredrik Olofsson is currently day-to-day with an upper-body injury, and he will not play tonight. Ondrej Pavel will step in for Olofsson, presumably on the 4th line, and make his NHL debut tonight.
Projected Lineup
Arturri Lehkonen — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Tomas Tatar — Ryan Johansen — Valeri Nichushkin
Miles Wood — Ross Colton — Jonathan Drouin
Andrew Cogliano — Ondrej Pavel — Logan O’Connor
Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Bo Byram — Sam Girard
Jack Johnson — Josh Manson