Colorado Avalanche Hosting Nashville Predators on Division Rival Night

The Colorado Avalanche host the Nashville Predators for the first time this season — and the first time since their playoff series. Who will prevail?

The Colorado Avalanche are hosting the Nashville Predators in the year’s first Division Rival night. This is also the first time the two teams will face off since they fought in the playoffs.

Unfortunately, the Predators are one of the few teams the Avalanche have historically struggled with. They’ve gone 33-39-7-5 (ties). Interestingly, they’ve never gone to the shootout.

Last season, Nashville took all four games the two teams played, so that blows. In fact, you’d have to go all the way back to March 28, 2016 to find a regular season Avalanche victory over this vexing team. As we know, the Preds took the playoff series 4-2.

I’m already depressed looking at that information. However, you should probably know that Nashville is coming off a 1-0 victory over the Boston Bruins.  Colorado is coming off a 7-6 weirdness with the Vancouver Canucks. And by weirdness, I mean overtime loss.

How to Enjoy the Game

Game time: November 7, 8:00 pm MT
TV Networks: NBCSN
Radio: Altitude Radio (AM 950)

Tonight the Colorado Avalanche will be debuting their new third jerseys, which look a lot like their old third jerseys.

Game Management

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Well, guess who blew a lot of leads in their last two games. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t the Nashville Predators.

Game management has ever been an issue for the Colorado Avalanche. They have a hard time playing with any lead. I mean, you go into the third period with a three-goal lead, you should win the game, or at least get a point. No-go against Calgary. You have a lead three different times in a game, you should win. No-go against Vancouver.

You score 11 goals between two games, you should have more than one point to show for it. No-go on the Canadian road trip.

Well, hopefully tonight the Avs can enjoy a little home cooking and finally defeat the Preds again.

Messed Up Defensive Pairings

I’ve stated more than once I hate coach Jared Bednar’s salad spinner approach to line-making — stick them all in a container, spin, and see what shoots out. Well, that goes double for defensive pairings.

According to Bednar’s post-practice presser, he’s keeping the same defensive pairings from the Vancouver Canucks game:

• Ian Cole–Samuel Girard
• Patrick Nemeth-Erik Johnson
• Nikita Zadorov–Tyson Barrie

Because, you know, Vancouver scored seven goals while shelling goalie Philipp Grubauer with 37 shots. That indicates a healthy Avalanche defense, right?

Well, you know, former Predator Girard “likes playing on the right side,” according to Bednar. And apparently the 20-year-old is our top-pairing defenseman now, even though this happened:

That play made all the highlight reels for last season’s playoffs because

Filip Forsberg

spanked

the rookie, Girard.

If only we had some sort of math-based tool by which we could judge defensive pairings and defensemen in general:

To be clear, “messed” is not the word I wanted to use in the above header.

Potential Jost Return

The Colorado Avalanche might get one of their valuable forwards back. Tyson Jost participated in the full drills during yesterday’s practice:

According to Bednar, the team planned to evaluate him last night and during today’s morning skate. Jost has missed three games with a head injury.

Jost, of course, is raring to go. He said during his post-practice interview:

"“Obviously you don’t want to be out with an injury, it’s the last thing that you want. I’m just excited to go back in and play my game and get back to the way that I know how to play. It’s an exciting time right now for us. We didn’t have the best road trip that we wanted, so we’re excited to get back in that win column and start playing Avs hockey again.”"

Jost skated on the fourth line during practice yesterday, which I hate. (See above salad spinner comment.) However, Tyson is one of the team’s top prospects. It will be ideal to get him back, even in a limited capacity.

After tonight, the Colorado Avalanche will face the Predators three more times. They’ll visit Nashville on November 27 and on February 23. They’ll host Nashville on January 21.