Colorado Avalanche: 3 Storylines in the Eye of the Hurricane

The Colorado Avalanche will continue their East Coast road trip with an afternoon game against the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Colorado Avalanche play their third game of a four-game roadie against the Carolina Hurricanes. The team is looking to draw ahead on the road trip as they’re 1-0-1 so far.

Historically, the Avs have played quite well against the Hurricanes, having gone 19-7-3-3 (ties) all time with a goal differential of +20. Last season, though, Colorado split the series with the ‘Canes, each team winning at home.

The Avalanche are coming off a 5-3 victory over the Devils in New Jersey. Carolina hasn’t played since Tuesday when they lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

How to Enjoy the Game

Game time: October 20, 11:00 am MT
TV Networks: Altitude TV, FS-SE (Canes feed)
Radio: Altitude Radio (FM 92.5)

Grubauer Continues to Play

The Colorado Avalanche have announced that Philipp Grubauer will get the start in net against Carolina. Grubauer has started twice so far for the Avs, losing on October 9 in Columbus but winning on October 18 in New Jersey. That, of course, was the team’s last game.

Here’s what coach Jared Bednar said of the decision:

“We like what Grubi did, I also want to give him a chance to build off that game. We were pretty good defensively, he was good and I want to see if he can bounce back and equal that performance, or even better that performance that he had the other night.”

The performance in question is the one against the Devils. Grubauer stopped 27 of 30 shots for a .900 save percentage. He’s not at Semyon Varlamov level yet, but obviously that’s what he’s trying to achieve.

Regardless of today’s result, Varlamov is almost certain to finish out the roadie by starting in Philadelphia.

Avs Keep Streaking

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The Colorado Avalanche as a whole aren’t streaking. However, some players are on some pretty good streaks of their own.

Nathan MacKinnon set a new franchise record for scoring goals in the Avalanche’s first six games of the season. Unfortunately, that number does stop at six because he didn’t score a goal against the Devils. However, MacKinnon has scored at least one point in each of his first seven games with Colorado.

You know who else has done that? If you guessed Mikko Rantanen, you are correct. He only has two goals on the season, but he’s quietly racking up assists. He has 11 on the season.

Overall, Avalanche players have some good statistics:

By the way, MacKinnon and Rantanen both have three multi-point nights. Captain Gabriel Landeskog has two. What’s more, his Thursday-night hat trick also propelled him into third place on the team for scoring.

Not that we care, but Sebastian Aho also has a point in each of the Hurricanes’ seven games.

Ahem, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but Tyson Barrie is still looking for his first goal of the season.

An Afternoon Affair

As you can notice from the game notes above, today’s game is a matinee. The Avs had a 30-minute on-ice session yesterday that seemed pretty informal:

Anyway, I’m guessing that practice will take the place of a morning skate since the game starts in the morning. The Colorado Avalanche have historically performed well in matinee games.

For his part, Nikita Zadorov likes early games:

“It’s different, you eat breakfast only before the game, but I like 1 o’clock games. I think you get enough time to wake up, and it’s nice to get it done early. You have the whole afternoon to recover for the next game and you don’t have to fly late as well, so it’s fun to play those games.”

This matinee game is the first of the Colorado Avalanche’s 2018-19 season.

After today, the Avalanche will make their way over to Philadelphia for the final game of their four-game roadie. They’ll get a couple games at home before a quick jaunt to Minnesota.