Colorado Avalanche Hoping to Top the Top Team, Tampa Bay Lightning

The Colorado Avalanche complete their four-game roadie in Tampa Bay tonight. They hope to make this trip a winning one.

The Colorado Avalanche are the number-four team in the NHL with their 39 points, which is heady stuff indeed. They are six points behind the  league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning, though.

to be honest, that’s still pretty heady business.

Tonight, the two teams face off for the second and final time this season. They met for the first time this season on October 24, a low-scoring affair that saw Tampa shut Colorado out while only scoring a goal themselves. Last season, the Bolts took both games. However, all-time the Avs have an edge — 17-12-2-3 (ties).

The Avalanche are coming off a thrilling 5-2 win over the Florida Panthers. that puts them at .500 hockey on their road trip. They’re 8-1-1 in their last 10 games.

The Lightning are coming off a 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins, which is their fifth straight win. They’re 8-2-0 in their last 10. Technically, that means the Avs have a slight edge.

I guess we could call this game a Clash of the Titans. Or we could not and just look at some keys to the game.

How to Enjoy the Game

Game time: December 8, 5:00 pm MT
TV Networks: Alt , SUN  (Bolts’ feed)
Radio: Altitude Radio (FM 92.5)

Top Line Watch

The Colorado Avalanche have the top line in hockey in Mikko Rantanen, Nathan MacKinnon, and Gabriel Landeskog (124 points). This line has been together for about a year. They’ve been on fire all season, as their numbers show, and are accounted by all as the top line in the NHL.

Well, coach Jared Bednar may beg to differ. In the game against the Florida Panthers, he demoted the NHL’s points leader, Mikko Rantanen, to the second line in favor of J.T. Compher. He lucked out with an Avs victory — game-winning goal Compher — but I thought stats didn’t lie. And stats indicate keeping the best NHL line together is, you know, a good idea.

At the time of writing, I don’t know what the official line combinations for tonight’s game are. However, hopefully Bednar doesn’t bet against the grain and keeps the En Fuego Line together.

Game Management

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The team always struggles with game management, barring a few games here and there. However, their management of the game from period to period and even shift to shift has gotten bad recently.

The general consensus of the Pittsburgh game, which Colorado lost 6-3, is that they played well except for the first 10 minutes and the last period. Bednar broke up the top line in the Florida game because they didn’t have much jump in the whole first half of the game.

It’s rough to see the team fail to play a full 60 — or even a full 20-minute period — on a regular basis. Because when they do, they’re the match of any team in the NHL.

They’re going to have to bring that mindset to tonight’s game because, as I mentioned, the Bolts are the best in the NHL right now.

Are the Colorado Avalanche the Real Deal?

And that brings me to my real fret. I’m afraid that, outside of the brilliance of the top line and occasional brilliant play from other sectors, Colorado is not one of the top-dog teams in the NHL. My faith is fragile.

They’re still a rebuilding team. They have some really good pieces in place. However, I still think of them as precocious kids, not the solidly elite teams like the Bolts, Capitals and Predators. I keep thinking of them as playing beyond their level.

We’re a third of the way into the season, though. The Avalanche are the number-two team in the Central Division, which ironically also makes them the number-two team in the Western Conference (which shows you hard our division is) and the number-four team in the NHL.

That… seems like it might be the real deal. It… seems like the up-and-coming team is pretty close to arriving. We… might just be the next Nashville Predators.

That’s heady stuff, Avs Nation.

To be the real deal, though, you’ve got to beat all the kinds of teams in all the kinds of ways. And that’s what we hope to see tonight — Colorado bringing the level of game necessary to beat the NHL-leading Lightning in their own building.

After tonight, the Avalanche head home. They’ll host the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday.