Colorado finally got back into the win column on Tuesday night against the New Jersey Devils, winning by a final score of 8-4. Today, they look to keep that momentum rolling against the Vegas Golden Knights, as they faceoff against them in a Halloween matinee matchup. This will be the first of three regular-season matchups between these two teams.
Colorado Avalanche (6-1-4)
The Opponent: Vegas Golden Knights (6-1-3)
Time: 2:00 p.m. MT
Watch: Altitude, Altitude+, ESPN+
Listen: Altitude Sports Radio, 92.5 FM
Colorado Avalanche
After losing four games
in a row, the Avs finally got back in the win column against the New Jersey Devils. Outside of the five minute stretch in the second period where Colorado allowed the Devils to score four unanswered goals to pull within one, everything seemed to go right for the Avs in that game.
The perhaps one of the biggest positives to come out of that game, the powerplay finally started to actually convert, and did so at a very high rate during that game. Colorado ended up going 4/6 on the man-advantage, and while you’re certainly not going to get that conversion rate every single night, it felt like Colorado desperately needed a game like that, after how bad the powerplay had been at converting before that game.
Mackenzie Blackwood had progressed enough in his injury recovery to backup in the second Devils game, with this upcoming back-to-back will he finally get in net?
Projected Lineup
Artturi Lehkonen – Nathan MacKinnon – Martin Necas
Valeri Nichushkin – Brock Nelson – Ross Colton
Gabriel Landeskog – Jack Drury – Victor Olofsson
Parker Kelly – Zakhar Bardakov – Gavin Brindley
Devon Toews – Cale Makar
Josh Manson – Brent Burns
Ilya Solovyov – Sam Malinski
Scott Wedgewood
Mackenzie Blackwood
Vegas Golden Knights
The Golden Knights have been sort of quietly rolling along to start this season, and have found themselves holding the first place spot in the Pacific Division. They will be looking to get-right in this game, as they are coming off of a 3-0 loss against the Florida Panthers, which saw the Golden Knights get shutout. It would be unreasonable to expect that to happen again, especially with all the talent that this Golden Knights team has on this roster. This is not a team that is likely to roll over and make it easy on the Avs.
Projected Lineup
Alexander Holtz – Jack Eichel – Ivan Barbashev
Pavel Dorofeyev – Tomas Hertl – Mitch Marner
Reilly Smith – William Karlsson – Brandon Saad
Cole Reinhardt – Brett Howden – Keegan Kolesar
Brayden McNabb – Shea Theodore
Ben Hutton – Zach Whitecloud
Jeremy Lauzon – Kaedan Korczak
Akira Schmid
Carl Lindbom
