Avs Wrap: Byram Keeps Skating, How Much Should Kuemper Play Down the Stretch?

Bo Byram skated again today, and he’s really looked fast. Whether that means a return still this season with the Avalanche? Nobody really knows, maybe not even Byram himself. Officially, he remains on personal leave.

But, Byram is around the team again, using team facilities, conversing with teammates again, etc., etc. So, once again with Bo Byram, there is hope at least.

For what it’s worth Bryam looks great working with a coach. Such good news to see him back on the ice. pic.twitter.com/rzVFOrYmPK

— Darren McKee (@dmac1043) March 2, 2022

So, there are 28 games left in the regular season. One question I have is: how much should Darcy Kuemper play down the stretch? Should his workload be cut back some, to save more energy for the playoffs? Especially, when the Avs pretty much have the Central Division and Western Conference titles already wrapped up?

There was a scary moment last night when Kuemper was bowled over in the net. He’s had knee injuries before, so it was a nervous moment or two when he was down. He turned out to be fine, but should he play less down the stretch, to lessen the chances of some ghastly injury right before the playoffs (a la Semyon Varlamov in 2018?).

Let’s hear what you think on that. I think he should play a bit less because of this. Getting Pavel Francouz more action could definitely benefit him and the Avs for the playoffs too.

Some other Avs notes, and a couple from around the league:

• Colorado picked up its league-best 18th comeback win of the season. It was the club’s 10th third-period rally, also tops in the NHL.
• Cale Makar registered two points (2a) to extend his career-best point/assist streak to nine games, equaling the franchise record for longest assist streak by a blueliner. He matches John-Michael Liles’ nine-game run from Oct. 7-26, 2010. Makar has established a new career-high in assists (40), surpassing his previous best of 38 set during his rookie campaign in 2019-20. He leads all defensemen in points (58), goals (18) and is tied for third in assists.
• Devon Toews scored his 10th goal of the season to surpass his total goals from last year and set a new career high. Toews now has career-best numbers in goals (10), assists (32) and points (42) in 2021-22 and paces the league in plus/minus rating at +45. He tallied three points tonight to equal his career-best. It’s the fifth three-point night of his career, three of which have been this season (last: Jan. 22 vs. Montreal).
• Andre Burakovsky, on scoring for his third straight game: “You just got to stay with it. Like I said before, I think I was creating before too and I got chances, just maybe a little bit unlucky. It didn’t bounce my way. I think [tonight] if you look at the goal, I think it hit the D-man’s stick or something and went five-hole on the goalie. Yeah, the luck turned a little bit and it’s nice to see them go in.”
• Toews, on the Avs’ up-and-down power play: “I know the stats show it’s down from what our percentages are, but we feel like we are creating momentum for our team. I think two or three of them we’ve had with one or two seconds after the power play, which affects the stat right there pretty quickly, but we’re getting looks, we’re moving. You know, we’re getting good time in practice to work on it and just finding different looks against different teams. We’re seeing some
  teams now that we haven’t seen in a long time, so it’s going to be a different look every night and we’re just trying to find the open guy and hit him.”
• Toews, on playing against his former team for the first time: “Just nice to win. You know, that’s the most important thing. You have friends on other teams and people that are close to you, but at the end of the day, we got to go out there and do our job and we were fortunate tonight to get the win. I think at times, we didn’t look very good and at other times, we looked really dangerous. But if we want to go on a long run, we got to do it for 60 every night.”
• In NHL stuff, I don’t think people should put much stock into Filip Forsberg trade deadline rumors (NHL.com)
• But Anaheim might be dealing some potential UFAs (Hockey News)
• San Jose: Take one off the trade market? Tomas Hertl says contract talks are going well with the San Jose Sharks.