Morning Skate Diary
Colorado Avalanche lineup for tonight against Blues
A couple of new faces in the lineup for the Colorado Avalanche tonight, as they resume their schedule against the St. Louis Blues. Here is the lineup, as just announced by Jared Bednar:
Landeskog-MacKinnon-Burakovsky
Soderberg-Kadri-Compher
Saad-Jost-Nichushkin
O’Brien-Bellemare-Kaut
D
Toews-Girard
Graves-Makar
Nemeth-Timmins
Dubnyk
NOTEBOOK: So, as you can see, Martin Kaut will play, fourth-line right wing. Kaut had five goals and 14 points in 13 games for the Colorado Eagles before being called up. … J.T. Compher second-line right wing? We’ll see how that works. Not sure I like him, instead of Saad, on the second line but, again, let’s see what happens. … Avs are -165 favorites to win outright on SuperBook Colorado tonight. The over-under is six goals. … Patrik Nemeth, as we said last night, will make his second-time-around Avs debut. Nice to see more faith being shown in Conor Timmins too. … If you’re looking for a place to watch the game tonight, may I suggest Blake Street Tavern downtown? I’ll be there, so stop and say hello. The game will be broadcast with big sound. … Nazem Kadri is in a scoring slump, something Bednar addressed this morning. Said he thought Kadri tried to play “too fancy” for a while, but thinks he’s getting his game back together. … Kaut, on getting the call-up and lineup inclusion for tonight: “Always good to be here with the Avs. I know I’m still a young guy who needs to improve. The coaches in Loveland really helped me. We worked on a lot of small details. I just want to be a two-way forward. I’m feeling really good, so hopefully I’ll be staying here.” … Bednar said he saw much better energy and overall speed at the morning skate today, better than yesterday’s lackluster practice in Denver.