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Avalanche Lines and D Pairs for season opener against Flames
Morning skate over here at the Pepsi Center. If you’ve been following along on this here site the last day or two, the following lines and defensive pairs won’t be a surprise, but here they are, officially, for tonight’s season-opener against the Cal-Gary Flames (7 p.m., still no breakthrough on Altitude and the Big Three cable companies).
FORWARDS
Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen
Jost-Kadri-Burakovsky
Nieto-Compher-Donskoi
Calvert-Bellemare-Nichushkin
Scratches: Wilson, Kamenev.
DEFENSE
Girard-Makar
Zadorov-Johnson
Graves-Timmins
Scratch: Barberio
Philipp Grubauer in goal.
*** Well, hold the phone on those D pairs. The Avs listed them as thusly after the skate. They hadn’t been that way recently, but whatever. Johnson and Girard played together much of last year:
Here is Jared Bednar’s entire post-practice presser. In it, he talks about why Nichushkin got the nod over Wilson and Kamenev, in the starting 12.
— Adrian Dater (@adater) October 3, 2019
David Rittich will start in goal for the Flames. Cam Talbot is the backup.
Milan Lucic plays for the Flames now. Don’t forget, they still have Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett. I imagine there will be a bit of pushing and shoving and a few cross words out there tonight.
A couple minutes with J.T. Compher, about being the third-line center:
See ya tonight. Don’t forget, I’ll be on 104.3 The Fan soon after every Avs Monday-Friday game, breaking it all down. Tune in on your ride home or wherever you are. Here’s a link to listen live.
