Colorado Avalanche Looking for Mini Win Streak against Blues

The Colorado Avalanche are attempting to string a couple wins together for the first time in a while when they host the St. Louis Blues.

The Colorado Avalanche are treading water and attempting to turn that into swimming upstream. Today they face the St. Louis Blues, who miraculously went from “Poor me, let’s sell off all our assets” to third in the Central Division.

As we all to well know, the Avs went from the Wonderkids of the Central to repeat underdogs. I swear, they don’t know how to be in the dominant position anymore.

Anyway, the 57-point Avalanche are still in playoff contention by virtue of the majority of the Central being surprisingly mediocre. Well, it ain’t over until the team’s been mathematically eliminated, and that hasn’t happened yet.

The Blues are coming into the game on an eight-game winning streak. Indeed, they haven’t lost in the month of February. They’ve beaten tough teams like the Predators (twice), the Lightning, the Blue Jackets, and the Capitals recently.

The Avalanche just beat a tough team, the Winnipeg Jets. That win ended an eight-game losing skid.

So, let’s look at some keys for the Colorado Avalanche as they host their Central Division rival St. Louis Blues.

How to Enjoy the Game

Game time: February 16, 1:00 pm MT
TV Networks: ALT,  FS-MW (Blues’ Feed)
Radio: Altitude Radio (FM 92.5)

Avs Fourth Line

The Colorado Avalanche finally have a fourth line. In the win against the Jets, the team rolled out a line that consisted of A.J. Greer, Dominic Toninato, and Sven Andrighetto. Toninato scored his first NHL goal, and the Altitude announcers couldn’t stop raving about how polished Greer looked on the ice. Personally, I thought Andrighetto had one of his best games of the season.

We’ll see how long the fourth line lasts. Jared Bednar has the tendency to start mixing up lines willy nilly if things aren’t going according to plan. However, he created that line, so let’s hope he keeps it together.

Side note: The sophomores are back together for the second line — Alexander Kerfoot, Tyson Jost, and J.T. Compher. It looks solid.

Goal Tending

The goalie situation became something of an elephant in the room for a while. The Avalanche were getting below league average goal tending from both their goalies. That fact made it awful hard to win a lot of hockey games.

The team has gone back to relying primarily on Semyon Varlamov in an almost “devil you know” fashion. Perhaps that tactic makes sense for a team still fighting for a playoff berth.

That tactic makes less sense for the future. Varlamov is gone at the end of the year. The Avs need to figure out what they have in Philipp Grubauer, discover if he is the goalie of our future.

Then again, maybe they’ve already decided that — and the answer might be no. Grubauer has only 20 starts in 57 games. Varlamov has almost twice that. It doesn’t appear that the Avs are really testing their “heir apparent” goalie.

We all want the team to give Pavel Francouz a chance. However, as long as they harbor their playoff aspirations, it appears they won’t consider that option.

The NHL is coming perilously close to the trade deadline — just eight days and some hours from now. The Colorado Avalanche have five games between now and then, counting today. Results from said games may determine how the team approaches that all-important day.