Saturday Avs Notebook and NHL links

While we’re all sitting around waiting for the Avs-Blues series to start (I keep hearing it’ll be Tuesday, broadcast on Turner, with a couple of good sources saying this) let’s do some Avs thoughts and NHL links:

• Assuming it’s a Tuesday start, the Avs’ “rest” advantage will pretty much have gone out the window. The Blues will have gotten five full days of rest by game time. One thing we still don’t know: will Torey Krug be available to the Blues? Krug has been out since Game 3 from the Wild series with a lower-body injury and the only thing Blues coach Craig Berube has said is that Krug would be out “a while.” Krug hurt his left knee, it looked like, after laying a hit on Minnesota’s Matt Boldy. The knee completely buckled on the hit and it looked bad.
• I think a loss of Krug will show up more as a real loss against the Avs than it did against the Blues. He skates the puck out of the zone well and you have to have that against the Avs if you want to have a real shot at beating them.
• I think the only lineup change Jared Bednar will make in Game 1 is Andrew Cogliano coming back in. I think Darren Helm is the most likely guy to sit out, but that definitely could be wrong. Kubel or LOC are the other two candidates, but I think Bednar likes Kube’s agitator factor, along with LOC. They’re going to need a nasty team to play the Blues, because Craig Berube’s strategy, I’m sure, will be to hit the Avs as much as possible. The Avs need to be just as much the initiators as possible, not the retaliators. Guys like NAK and LOC are initiators.
• Old friend Nikita Zadorov is almost certainly going to be suspended for Game 7 tomorrow for Calgary because of a hit on Dallas’ Luke Glendening last night (Calgary Hockey Now)
• The Penguins are in big trouble. They have to play a Game 7 in New York tomorrow night. But it  does look like they’ll get Sidney Crosby back for the game, after missing Game 6 with a reported concussion. Our network of sites now has Hall of Famer Dave Molinari covering the Pens, so give this good story a read on their chances for tomorrow (Pittsburgh Hockey Now)
• How the Florida Panthers came together to eliminate Washington, after falling behind in the series (Florida Hockey Now)
• My three best bets for the three Game 7s today (Bookies.com)
• The Boston Bruins’ outlook for Game 7 today (Boston Hockey Now)
• The Avs took today off.
• Colorado Hockey Now will be on the road in St. Louis for the next round. Terry Frei will be there, and I look to be a game-time decision. My son is graduating high school and I have family coming into town, with stuff scheduled that will be right about the times of Games 3 and 4 it looks like. So I may be staying here (and I’m sure you can understand it’s more important for me to do that) but we’ll see. Your Avs Travel Tip Jar contributions really helped out in covering the costs of going to Nashville in the last round, and the Tip Jar is open for St. Louis too. I’m a small shop, obviously, so you really help out with this stuff and allow us to cover as much road stuff as we can. Here’s the link to the Tip Jar, and remember, 5% of every dollar goes to a contribution to the Thornton Food Bank.
• PS: I’m gonna go. Terry will stay back this time.