Gameday: Avalanche Lines And Goalie For Sabres

The Avalanche will take on the Buffalo Sabres tonight in Buffalo. The Sabres are not the greatest team in the Atlantic Division as they are 10-12-1 and seventh in the division. They only have three wins in the last 10 games and they played in Detroit last night, losing in the shootout. This will be the first time that the Avalanche will meet their 2016 first-round draft pick in Tyson Jost as a Sabre since he was picked up on waivers last week by Buffalo.

You can expect Alexandar Georgiev as the Avalanche starter, as this is coming from Conor McGahey at the morning skate. With the shootout last night and travel, expect Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to start for Buffalo. Luukkonento is one of the worst goalies in the league, ranking 48th or goals saved over expected at -.09. So hopefully the Avalanche will be able to get some confidence back tonight the weak Sabres.

Expected Lines

Forwards

Lehkonen-MacKinnon-Rantanen

Cogliano-Compher-O’Connor

Galchenyuk-Newhook-Foudy

Blidh-Megna-Hunt

Defense

Makar-Toews

Girard-Manson

MacDonald-Johnson

Goalies

Georgiev (starter)

Francouz

Back in Denver, the injured players are working on getting healthy again. Darren Helm has been pushing himself hard everyday on the ice on his skating. It appears that he is working as hard as he can to get back. Val Nichushkin and Bo Byram were both skating on Monday, but have been doing dryland exercises since then. The biggest news of all was that yesterday, Gabriel Landeskog was seen for the first time on skates this season. He was being cautious, but it is progress towards his January return. There have been brief appearances of Evan Rodrigues and Kurtis MacDermid off ice but that is all. The Avalanche are slowly starting to get healthy, Nichushkin is slated to be back perhaps as early as a week or so. Be patient everyone, help is on the way.