Avs Talk - A Colorado Avalanche Blog

It's that time of the year again. Time to nervously hold your breath as the Flames and Avalanche do battle. I have terrible memories of last time these two teams faced each other. It was what was marked as the wake-up call the Avalanche needed on the season. Unfortunately, I don't think they've answered the alarm yet. It was also the night that this site received record hits. The reason: Flames fans stumbled across my post-game rant, found it amusing, and linked to it from their forums. Now, as "neat" as it is to see lots of people coming here...I don't want that to happen again tonight! I want to see lots of people coming because they're celebrating an Avalanche win.

Recently, the Flames bolstered themselves by adding Brad Stuart to their already impressive defensive line along with re-acquiring Craig Conroy to center their top line with Iginla and Tanguay. If Conroy and Iginla can get going again, that will be one of the best #1 units in the league. Combine that with a hard-nosed, hard-hitting team, you've got just the kind of opponent that the Avalanche, and the rest of the league, don't like to face.

After a 39 save shutout performance against the Ducks, Peter Budaj will be in net again tonight. I still won't say he stole the game but he did put in a great performance and was certainly worthy of the praise he received, which included being the #1 star of the night on nhl.com. I'm pretty stingy lately on game-stealing performances by goaltenders. It must be the winter air.

Joe Sakic will continue his quest for 600 goals tonight. He's had a lot of success against the Flames in the past, scoring 33 times and notching 48 assists in 66 career games against them. And given that he's scoreless in their 2 games this season, I'd say that qualifies him to be a part of the ol mantra: the more things stay the same, the more likely they are to change. I'm calling a two-goal performance from Sakic tonight. If he doesn't get that...I'll edit my post and pretend I never said it.

The rookie duo of Paul Stastny and Wojtek Wolski is getting a lot of treatment lately. They were both recently feature in nhl.com articles as well as in the sports sections of various newspapers. Today, they are both in the Crashing the Net article which ranks them as #6 and #3 respectively. I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a second and say "Are you kidding me?". If one of them should be top 3, it should be Stastny in my book. Not only does he have more points than Wolski, he has shown himself to be a more complete player so far. Yes, Wolski is improving, but he still hasn't caught up to Stastny in my eyes.

Injuries
Patrice Brisebois - back, LTI

Darren McCarty - hip, IR
Richie Regehr - concussion, IR

Hot
Sakic has 7 in 4, Stastny has 6 in 4, Arnason has 4 in 4,Brunette has 3 in 3, Mclean has 4 in 5.

Tanguay and Iginla have 4 in 2, Langkow and Conroy have 3 in 2, Huselius has 12 in 9.

Cold
Svatos has 0 in 4.

Amonte has 0 in 6, Regehr has 0 in 5.

Goaltenders
Peter Budaj - 17-13-3, 2.67 GAA, .909 save pct
Miika Kiprusoff - 28-16-7, 2.27 GAA, .923 save pct

Standings
Colorado - 27-25-4, 5th in NW, 10th in West
Calgary - 30-19-8, 2nd in NW, 7th in West