Pre-game vs Minnesota - Mar 11, 2007

This is going to be a quick one as I just got back from a wedding 5 hours away and have to duck out again for the afternoon. So I likely won't get a chance to see the game until later tonight, if at all. But I'll have a post-game up regardless just to keep the flow going.

With 14 games left, the Avalanche play divisional opponents 10 more times. Mathematically, that is enough to swing themselves into the playoffs. But it all has to start with a win this afternoon against the Minnesota Wild. And after a 3 day layoff, the Avs better come out with some energy because the Wild are a high-flying team.

This is also a big game for Paul Stastny although he has been humble enough in interviews to not make a bit fuss of it. If he gets a point tonight, he will break the NHL rookie point-streak record with 18 straight games. He tied the record in style on Thursday with 2 assists in the Avalanche win over Buffalo. If he and Hedjuk continue their chemistry, I see no reason why he won't break the record today.

That's all I've got in me as I'm being heckled to get ready. Enjoy the game and give some extra cheers for me.

Injuries
Brisebois - back, LTI
Leopold - wrist, IR
Turgeon - calf, IR
Svatos - groin, day-to-day
Skrastins - knee, day-to-day

Boogard - back, day-to-day
Walz - upper body, day-to-day

Hot
Stastny has 15 in 9, Hejduk has 6 in 3, Wolski has 3 in 3, Mclean has 3 in 4.

Bouchard has 3 in 2, Rolston, White, Skoula, Burns and Moore all have 2 in 2.

Cold
Brunette has 1 in 4.

Hall has 0 in 7.

Goaltenders
Peter Budaj - 23-15-4, 2.72 GAA, .906 save pct
Niklas Backstrom - 14-8-5, 2.23 GAA, .924 save pect

Standings
Colorado - 34-29-5, 4th in NW, 9th in West
Minnesota - 38-24-7, 2nd in NW, 7th in West

Post-game vs Minnesota - Feb 22, 2007

Well, I give it about 2 more games before I let myself officially throw in the towel. Don't get me wrong, I'll still want them to win as many games as possible but I don't want to hang onto false hopes of making the postseason.

It was typical Avalanche hockey as they scored a barrage of goals in the third period but it just wasn't enough to make up for scoring no goals in the first two periods. And it wasn't Gaborik or Rolston that finished them off. Hall, Smith, White and Koivu scored for Minnesota. If you say "Who?" to the first two names and give a "Oh, him" to the last two, you're not alone. It was Adam Hall's 6th goal of the season and Wyatt Smith's eight goal...of his career...that got the Wild jump-started and off to a 3-0 lead at the end of the second. The Avs made a valiant effort in making it 3-2 but another brief defensive breakdown led to the 4-2 goal from Koivu. Svatos got them back within 1 but they couldn't get the goal to tie it.

Unfortunately, I was mired in work and wasn't paying a terrible amount of attention so I won't make too many comments regarding players or particular plays. It actually didn't seem to be too bad of a game from the Avalanche but they were just sluggish in general. No boneheaded mistakes that I saw but no real urgency in their game either. Maybe they haven't looked at the standings lately.

Paul Stastny continued his impressive run by adding 2 assists to his current point total. Likewise for Andrew Brunette. Together with an assist from Sakic, those 3 continued their latest point streaks. If it wasn't for these guys jump-starting the offense, I shudder to think of the type of games we would have been suffering through.

Brad Richardson made the most of his time on the top-line as he scored the Avalanche's second goal. He's still not a first-line player, but he's done well for the time being. I certainly think it will help his development more than playing on the fourth line. If Richardson can become even a second-line center, couple that with his penalty-killing prowess of late and you have quite a player on your hands. It should be interesting to see how he continues to grow over the next couple seasons. Hopefully it's still with this franchise.

The Good
- fighting until the end

The Bad
- needing to fight from behind

The Ugly
- Pavol Demitra (the bald head creeps me out)

Pre-game vs Minnesota - Feb 22, 2007

It's do or die. A must win. The most important game of the season. And it's at home as Marion Gaborik, Pavol Demitra and Brian Rolston come to town. Well, the rest of the Wild will probably be there too but really, does the rest of the team matter? The Avalanche are coming off a big win against Calgary on Tuesday and the Wild recently finished off the Stars to stay one step (ok, 5 steps technically) ahead of the Avalanche in the playoff race. With all the talk of the Northwest division and Western conference in general being so tight, I think people are overlooking just how close the race for a playoff spot in the East is. But I digress.

Paul Stastny is currently on one heck of a hot streak and recently broke the Avalanche rookie scoring record previously held by Alex Tanguay. Not that he didn't break the franchise record which was set by none other than Peter Stastny back in 80-81. Like father like son it seems and that can be nothing but good news for a team on the verge of losing their franchise player. No, likely not for another 2 or 3 seasons but it's good to see some youngsters showing they may be capable of a similar role.

And to stay on the topic of streaks and an aforementioned franchise player, Mr. Joe Sakic himself is on a tear these last few games. He has 9 points in his last 4 games and has 31 points since the the new year began. This has put him on pace for a 98 point season and could be the first time since the 01 cup season that he breaks the 90, and dare I say 100, point barrier.

And thankfully Milan Hejduk has started to light the lamp as well. He's got 10 points in his last 6 and has really shown signs of life lately. It appears that he and Statsny are really starting to click together. I'd hate to attribute the recent surge to having Brad May creating space for them on that line. It has been fairly coincidental that putting him there has seemed to spark them. Too bad that May still have no idea what to do with the puck when it comes anywhere near him. I don't think I've seen anyone look so out of place with the puck while playing at this level. It seems he thinks it's a time bomb or something.

With Manny Fernandez still down due to injury, I'd expect Backstrom to get the start again. Or they could toss Josh Harding in since he currently leads the team with a 1.0 save percentage. In the whole 18 minutes he's played with the team. But you can always give the Wild credit for having great goaltending tandems at almost all times. Starter goes down? No problem, existing backup becomes the new starter, AHL guy becomes the new backup and they're good to go, looking no worse for wear.

Injuries
Brisebois - back, LTI
Leopold - wrist, IR
Turgeon - calf, IR
Wolski - head, day-to-day

Fernandez - knee, day-to-day

Hot
Sakic has 9 in 4, Hejduk has 10 in 6, Stastny has 4 in 2, Brunette has 7 in 4, Skrastins has 4 in 4.

Gaborik has 9 in 5, Demitra has 8 in 5, Rolston has 4 in 3

Cold
Walz has 0 in 3, White has 1 in 5.

Arnason and McLean have 1 in 5.

Goaltenders
Peter Budaj - 18-14-3, 2.79 GAA, .906 save pct
Niklas Backstrom - 11-7-4, 2.25 GAA, .923 save pct

Standings
Colorado - 29-27-4, 4th in NW, 9th in West
Minnesota - 33-23-5, 2nd in NW, 7th in West

Post-game vs Minnesota - Feb 1, 2007

The Avalanche are defeated by the Wild and fall to 1-1 on their current five game homestand. The good news is, they could win their next 3 and get 8 out of 10 points! If they do that, they're right back into a playoff spot. As it stands now, they've fallen 4 more points back. It looks as though Vancouver will do the Avs a favor tonight and take care of Edmonton to keep those teams even in the standings.

4 goals on 37 shots doesn't scream of an amazing performance by Budaj. He played decent but was a bit shaky on a couple goals. Could he be faltering a bit in the stretch run? He sat out one game and came back with a great performance against Nashville. It could be that he needs a few more days off sprinkled in with his starts. Not many goaltenders, save for the true elite, start 10+ games in a row.

Jordan Leopold and Brett Clark came away with identical minutes and the main difference between them is Leopold's +2 versus Clark's -2. Seems to me that Leopold is ready to step into the #1 job for the Avalanche. He looks very solid on the back end and has made some great offensive contributions with 3 points in his 4 games since coming back from injury. The defenseman suffering in ice-time since Leopold returned is Ossi Vaananen. When Kurt Sauer is getting more ice-time than you are, you might want to look at picking up your game a bit.

And to stay on the ice-time bandwagon, Wojtek Wolski logged just shy of 20 minutes out there tonight. That's a full 1:20 ahead of Joe Sakic to lead all forwards in ice-time. He's getting both PP and PK time and it looks like Q is really showing some confidence in Wolski's game. It's well deserved as he really has improved as the season has gone on. He's looking much more confident and has started to use his size to his advantage. He's not laying out any bone-crunching checks, but he's been more willing to get dirty in front of the net than he was at the start of the season.

The trio of Svatos-Stastny-Hejduk has really been flying out on the ice lately and that line gathered up 3 points tonight. Milan Hejduk grabbed 2 assists and Marek Svatos contributed his first goal since January 11th. The January 11th goal was his first since he scored 2 on November 30th. So for those keeping track, that's 4 goals in a span of 2 months. Ouch. But he has had some wheels lately so I've got my fingers crossed that he's going to find his groove sooner than later.

That trio was out-dueled by Gaborik-Rolston/Walz-Demitra. When any combination of 2 Minnesota Wild players + Marian Gaborik were on the ice, bad things tended to happen. Gaborik came away with 2 goals and 1 assists, and Rolston, Walz, and Demitra each had an assist. If there is anybody in the league faster than Gaborik, I'd like to know who it is. As soon as he touches the puck the afterburners come on and there's not a defenseman in the league who can skate backwards well enough to keep up with him.

Unfortunately, the team in general just couldn't get it done tonight even though there were players that had flashes of brilliance. I've said it before, you can only come from behind so many times until you lose the game. It's been the story of the season so far for the Avalanche. They do a great job battling back but just can't put that extra spark in their game to overtake the lead. Or if they come away with the lead to begin with, they can't maintain the bloody thing long enough to actually get a regulation win.

So with a Saturday afternoon game against Edmonton looming, on CBC no less, I'd be looking for Theodore to get another start. It isn't that I want to see a goalie carousel going, but I also don't want to completely wear out one goaltender. Particularly a sophomore starter who has stumbled a bit lately.

The Good
- 3 goals on a hot goaltender

The Bad
- inopportune penalties
- ineffective penalty kill
- soft goals against

The Ugly
- losing a 4-point swing game

Pre-game vs Minnesota - Feb 1, 2007

It's the most important game of the year! At least until Saturday's game against Edmonton. Then that will be the most important game of the year! Maybe the problem with Avalanche up til now is that they forgot that every game is the most important game of the year, no matter who it's against or where you are in the standings. They all matter and you have to play like every single point matters, not just the ones down the stretch.

As I glance at the TSN standings page, much to my surprise, the Avalanche are in a playoff spot. After a brief moment of wondering if I'd entered an alternate dimension, I realized that all the division leaders are missing which bumped Colorado, Edmonton, and Phoenix into playoff contention. Interesting idea. Division leaders aren't allowed to make the playoffs. It makes sense as division leadesr tend to have lousy success at winning Cups. I wonder if Bettman will go for it or at least put it to a vote.

Going into this game, the Avalanche are 5-3-2 in their last 10 and have a 9-5-1 record against their division. Numbers that, if kept up, will surely have them back into playoff position in a few weeks. The real question is whether they can keep those numbers up. Some of those points were stolen from other teams just as other teams stole points from us. So maybe it's all a wash in the end! The team needs to improve their home record though if they really want to start jumping in the standings (and putting butts in the seats). A 14-10-3 record isn't abysmal but it sure has room for improvement.

Manny Fernandez is sitting out tonights game with a knee injury he re-aggravated. So that puts Niklas Backstrom between the pipes. With a 0.98 GAA and .957 save pct...it doesn't put a smile on my face. Hey, maybe they'll call up Harding and put him in net tonight to see how the kid handles pressure. It could happen.

Peter Budaj should be back in goal tonight after recovering from a shaky performance against the Coyotes. His performance in the Avs 4-minute PK against Nashville was likely the turning point that gave the Avs the momentum to finish off that game. When asked about the importance of the remaining games, Budaj gave it straight up. Essentially his comments were that there aren't as many games left as you might think the way the NW division is and preparation starts right from him (or Theodore) and filters down to the team. Nothing like seeing a goalie step up and say "It all starts with me".

Wojtek Wolski had a heck of a game against Nashville save for his blunder in the final minute. When asked about it, Wolski made no excuses. He owned up to it and said it won't happen again. Ah, refreshing to see that sort of attitude. Actually, it seems that most players on the team are willing to own up to their mistakes. Too bad they have to do it so often.

Injuries
Brisebois - back, out for season
Liles - foot, IR
May - shoulder, IR

Foster - knee, IR
White - knee, IR
Fernandez - knee, day-to-day

Hot
Sakic has 10 in 8, Stastny has 12 in 12, Brunette has 6 in 5, Clark has 4 in 4, Wolski has 3 in 2.

Gaborik has 10 in 9, Rolston, Nummelin and Bouchard have 3 in 2, Demitra has 3 in 3.

Cold
Svatos has 0 in 7, Hejduk has 1 in 4, Arnason has 1 in 4.

Johnsson has 0 in 4, Radivojevic has 0 in 5.

Goaltenders
Peter Budaj - 16-10-3, 2.6 GAA, .910 save pct
Niklas Backstrom - 5-5-3, 2.01 GAA, .909 save pct

Standings
Colorado - 25-21-4, 4th in NW, 9th in West
Minnesota -27-21-4, 3rd in NW, 8th in West