It's a meeting of elemental forces tonight as the Avalanche crash into the eye of the storm in Carolina. Too cheesy? Sorry.
Injuries
The Avalanche and Hurricanes are alike in more ways than their names imply. Both teams have been decimated by injuries and are icing lineups without some key players.
The Avalanche of course are missing Joe Sakic and Ryan Smyth up front and, to a lesser extent, are missing Kurt Sauer on the back end. Tyler Arnason finally made his return to much indifference against the Capitals so the IR list is shrinking.
The Hurricanes are missing some top scorers of their own in Ray Whitney, Justin Williams and Matt Cullen. Brett Hedican and David Tanabe are absent on the backend as well.
Goaltending
After 3 straight solid performances from Jose Theodore, Joel Quenneville has decided to stick with him as Theodore gets his fourth straight start.
The team nows they're squandering good performances from Jose and Andrew Brunette feels it's only a matter of time before the offense breaks out of their dry spell.
From the Rocky Mountain News:
"He's played great for three games and the last two, we got nothing," forward Andrew Brunette said. "We're just not scoring. If you don't score, you're not going to win. We're all responsible for being better offensively. We're just hitting a dry spell here."
Offense
And what of the offense? Well, the only offense to speak of has come from Marek Svatos who has 4 goals in his last 4 games and now leads the team with 17 goals and is on pace for a 30 goal season.
Who knew he'd start scoring once he was playing with some teammates who can feed him the puck? Not too delve too much into Svatos issues but he's certainly been stifled by the depth of offensive talent the Avalanche had for the last two seasons. It's good to see him break free from that even though it's at the expense of some key players.
Puck Drop
The puck drops at 7:08 ET and at about that time, I'll be stuffing some sucker in our first volleyball game of the new year.
So a recap may not be up until tomorrow morning as I won't be back home until around 10:30 ET.
Related Links
Rocky Mountain News Avalanche Report
Canes Country Preview
TSN Gameday
Svatos Sparking Avalanche
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Gameday: Avalanche @ Hurricanes
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