Avs Talk - A Colorado Avalanche Blog

Well it's game day again as they Avs continue their trip out on the West coast. I will have no chance of catching this on TVU since the NHL streams are shut down. Thank you very much NHL. You sure know how to attract fans to your product. So it's NHL radio for me, and thousands (hundreds? tens?) of other fans as well.

The Avs are looking to follow up on a huge win over San Jose on Thursday. They came out flying, put bodies in front of the net, and walked away with 5 goals against one of the best goaltenders in the league this season. Now, they're up against one of the worst in ol' Danny boy, so let's hope they have the same strategy!

Theodore gets the start tonight and why not, he played a great game against San Jose. I saw that second goal and it was a weird one. It was a lob shot that hit the ice right in front of Theodore who booted it to his defenseman...who turned out to be Joe Thornton. Oops! He bounced back commendably and got the W. He also brought his GAA under 3!

Rumour has it that Brisebois is the scratch tonight. Thank you! So Q is going to rotate scratches, but only amongst three of the D. The iron man reign marches on! I wonder how long this is going to continue though. I don't think we can run until the trade deadline on this sort of system. Well, I suppose we could, but I don't think that we should.

The Kings are struck with a rash of injuries. Mathieu Garon is out with a groin injury and they have four others on the IR: Macauley, Petiot, Sopel, Tverdovsky. If you're saying to yourself "Hey, that's 3 defensemen!", you're correct. They still have Blake, Visnovsky and Norstrom on the back-end though so don't count 'em out just yet.

I was contemplating doing a "keys to the game" section but let's be honest, we all know what the keys are to any game. First and foremost, score more goals than the opposition. If you can't do that, you will rarely win a hockey game. I'll have to check historical stats on what the percentages are. Secondly, play a full 60 minutes. Then of course, if it goes to overtime, play those five minutes too. Thirdly, fire on all cylinders, it's a key 2 points. I couldn't find that hilarious Sportchek ad but it sums the cliches up pretty well.

Injuries
Only May is left on the injured list for the Avs. Meh.

Macauley, Petiot, Sopen, Tverdovsky and Garon as mentioned.

Hot
Sakic and Clark both have 3pts in the last 2 (all in the SJ game). Wolski has 7 in 6 and Liles has 5 in 4.

Avery and Frolov each have 3 in 2 and Visnovsky has 12 in 11.

Cold
Lappy is still snake-bitten with 0 in 6. Hejduk and Stastny are in a funk with 0 in 3. Andrew Brunette has 2 in 7 but if he plays like he did in San Jose, he'll be moving back into the hot column.

Cloutier is 1-3 in the last 4 with an eye-popping 4.99 GAA and .824 save pct. Wow. Craig Conroy and Mike Cammalleri have 0 in 3, Jeff Cowan has 0 in 6 and Brian Willsie has 0 in 9. That's not typically cold by Brian Willsie standards but he did put up 41 points last season in Washington.

Goaltenders
Jose Theodore - 8-7-1 - 2.94 GAA, .905 save pct
Dan Cloutier - 5-10-2 - 3.76 GAA, .865 save pct (yes, those are real stats)

Standings
Colorado - 13-13-2 - 5th in NW, 10th in West
LA - 10-16-4 - 5th in Pacific, 12 in West