Avs Lines and D Pairs for Coyotes tonight; Cale Makar out again

Good news and bad news here for the Avs when it comes to health. The good news has to do with Matt Calvert and the bad news has to do with Cale Makar.

The good news: Calvert, while he won’t play tonight, is only out day-to-day with an upper-body injury and coach Jared Bednar said it is NOT concussion-related. I repeat, not concussion-related. Bednar said he “tweaked” something in warmup last night and couldn’t go. Logan O’Connor will take his spot in the lineup.

The bad news: Cale Makar is a scratch for tonight with an upper-body injury. Bednar said Makar is day-to-day as well. He did say “for now” anyway.

I’m going to try not to worry about Makar too much but…yeah, it’s getting a little worrying, all these nagging little injuries with Cale all the time now. I don’t know where the injury is with him. But, geez, you really hope this kid doesn’t get the “injury-prone” tag. If this is a nagging injury, it’s probably best to really rest him a while and make sure this thing is done with. But let’s just see how things play out.

Dan Renouf will take Makar’s spot in the lineup. Dan Renouf is 6-foot-3, 198 pounds and has played one NHL game previously in his career, with the Detroit Red Wings all the way back in 2016-17. He signed as a free agent with the Avs in 2019. He’s a left-handed shot.

So, let’s see how this works. Avs will have two D-men in the lineup – Renouf and Jacob MacDonald – who weren’t on the opening-night roster. Philipp Grubauer will be in goal. I’m still waiting to hear who will be in net for the Coyotes.

So, these should be the lines and D pairs, though Bednar did not say who Renouf would be paired with:

Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen

Saad-Kadri-Donskoi

Burakovsky-Compher-Nichushkin

Jost-Bellemare-O’Connor

D

Toews-Renouf

Graves-Girard

Byram-MacDonald

Grubauer in goal.

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