Avs Aim for 1st Before Olympic Break

There’s nothing like playing the worst team in the league to bring your players out of a slump.

Despite my protests to let Peter Budaj play this game to give Craig Anderson a break, the Avs stayed with the starter, and he awarded them with another shutout. This marks his 6th shutout of the season and 3rd against the Edmonton Oilers. That’s the last time I question Anderson’s endurance. Though it wasn’t like Anderson stole this game, considering the Avs outshot the Oilers 42-20, he did make some key saves when Edmonton goalie Drouin-Deslauriers refused to crack.

I called Wojtek out in my last post and he responds with the game-winning goal and a game-high eight shots. Matt Duchene made a gorgeous drop pass to Wolski for the score. Duchene mentioned that he and Wolski had a lot of chemistry back in training camp, so let’s hope this turns into something special.

The next guy I’ve got to call out is Mr. Marek Svatos. I know he’s been out for a while with injury, but if David Koci hadn’t played his obligatory 3 minutes of ice time this week, Svatos would certainly be the biggest liability on the ice for us since he’s been back. He has no points since his return, and has had a negative +/- in two of the last three games (obviously not a negative in this game since it was a shutout).  He’s been invisible on the ice, and he needs to start contributing or I say we call up Hensick, who’s still tearing it up in the AHL.

As I’m sure many of you are aware, the Avs now stand at 70 points for the season. To get an idea of how bad we really were last year, we could lose every single game for the rest of the season, and we’d still have a better record than the pre-Anderson and pre-Duchene Avalanche of 2008-2009. It truly is a remarkable turnaround, and its something to be excited about, but I’m sure no one is going to be satisfied with this season unless we get some playoff hockey. I know I won’t. We play the St. Louis Blues tonight while Vancouver is idle, which means we could move into a tie for 1st in the division with a win tonight.

We need Stastny to step up. He’s going to be the 1st line center for the American Olympic team and he has one point and is a -3 in his last five games. That is unacceptable for the leading offensive force of a playoff hopeful, and certainly not for the money he’s making. I see him having a big game tonight against his brother Yan and the Blues, and hopefully get himself back on track for a career year.