Evan Rodrigues Returns; Avalanche Lines, D Pairs, Goalie For Sabres

Some big news coming from the morning skate today: The Avalanche will be getting another top-six forward back in the lineup in Evan Rodrigues. Jared Bednar said that there will be a healthy scratch (finally) with Jacob MacDonald getting benched. We also saw Kurtis MacDermid join the team for their skate for the first time since his injury. He has been out with a lower body injury since the middle of November. Darren Helm continues to skate with the team as well, but his injury progress has been “going slower than they would like,” as Bednar put it.

Rodrigues sat down with the media for the first time since his injury and answered a few questions for everyone.

He had been working hard the last week or so to get back to the team and we asked him when he thought he knew he was ready to come back:

“Honestly, probably yesterday. You know, I was rehabbing pretty hard last week and trying to get ready for the day off Sunday. And then Monday, had a really big step where I felt, you know, a whole lot better than I had been and from that point, I kind of had this one circled than I was hoping to get back for it and felt good yesterday and happy to be back,” Rodrigues said.

How did the injury happen?

“Yeah, just (a) skate clip[ed the back of mine and yeah, just kind of tweak, tweak my leg and that was pretty much it, kind of a freak fluke thing. I was pretty scared. It was a weird feeling and kinda usually those things kind of happened with contact and this was just kind of it was a weird thing,” he said “So initially, it was a little scary. But once I got into the training room, I kind of knew right away and a little bit really kind of knew what was going on.”

Projected Lines

Forwards

Lehkonen-Rantanen-Nichushkin

Cogliano-Compher-Rodrigues

Hudon-Meyers-Foudy

D. Hunt-Newhook-O’Connor

Defense

Girard-Makar

Toews-Johnson

Englund-B. Hunt

Goalies

Georgiev

Francouz

NOTEBOOK: Georgiev gets the start after sitting for two straight. … Avalanche are -180 favorites to win, at SuperBook Colorado.