Colorado Avalanche: Keys for the Back-to-Back, Home-and-Home
The Colorado Avalanche have another tough area in their schedule, a home-and-home, back-to-back against the Chicago Blackhawks.
The Colorado Avalanche have a back-to-back, home-and-home against the Chicago Blackhawks. Really, NHL schedulers? Yet another back-to-back? The team has already had three.
Well, at least this one is a home-and-home back-to-back, so the Blackhawks don’t have any advantage over Colorado. They’re in the same boat.
At the time of writing, the Avalanche were in the first wild card spot, and the Blackhawks were #7 out of 9 in the wild card race.
The Blackhawks are coming off a 3-0 win over the Dallas Stars, while Colorado beat the Oilers 4-1 on Friday. These two game represent the first two meetings between the two teams. Last year, Chicago had a slight edge, winning three of their five meetings, though two went to overtime.
That was then, and this is now. Let’s look at some keys for the now.
Clean Up All Three Periods
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The Colorado Avalanche can play tight hockey that’s still exciting. Witness how they played two out of the three periods against Edmonton on Wednesday.
It’s just that they choose not to. In the first period against the Oilers — against a lot of teams, to be honest — they play so sloppy. They’re not maintaining their defensive assignments, and the forwards often seem to be one and done. And then a later period hits, and, BAM, they’re on.
They don’t need to hit playoff-push intensity. However, just clean up some of the garbage.
Speaking of garbage…
Minimize Turnovers
Hey, I get it that’s it’s getting to be Holiday Season. In fact, GM Joe Sakic officially kicked off the holiday season at the Brown Palace just a few days ago.
During the holiday season, turnovers are great — apple and even minced meat are very popular.
During a game, they’re less good. And by that I mean they’re bad. I understand you can’t eliminate all turnover from a game. But maybe, just maybe, eliminate them in the defensive zone and minimize them elsewhere.
DON’T GET INJURED!!!
I put this one in all caps because I feel like we all need to scream it loud enough for the hockey gods to hear. Really, hockey gods, what did the Colorado Avalanche do to you to deserve this spate of injuries? One Avs fan depressingly showed us just November’s injury list:
That’s right, one game after learning that defenseman Erik Johnson would miss at least the Oilers and Blackhawks game, we learned forward Andre Burakovsky was injured at some time in the second period against Edmonton. He missed the entire third period with what Jared Bednar called an upper-body injury.
I don’t know what the team has to do to keep off the IR list. However, I’d account it at least a small success if they achieved only that in this home-and-home. (I’d rather the win, too, though.)
Next. A Look at NHL Discipline. dark
How to Enjoy the Game
Game time: Nov. 29, 2:00 pm MT
TV: ALT, NBCSCH (Hawks’ feed)
Radio: Altitude Radio (AM 950/FM 92.5)