Avalanche News
No Better Time for an Avalanche Road Trip
The Avs won three out of four games at home — a loss to the Capitals before they hit the road — and the first two of four away.
The road trip couldn’t have come at a better time. Valeri Nichushkin, Jonathan Drouin and Miles Wood returned the same night — the 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals. There was no finger-pointing, the entire team failed.
The trio of players needed to get timing down, which imbalanced the chemistry of the team.
Drouin acclimated quickly playing both on the second line with Casey Mittelstadt and the top line with Nathan MacKinnon in his return. He also played on the No. 1 power-play unit.
“I’m excited to get on the road, I haven’t been on the road for a while. I’ll be on the sideline and just kind of hang out with trainers, it’s not something you want to do,” Drouin said after practice following the loss to the Caps. “For me, just yesterday, as the game went on, I felt more comfortable finding my legs, breathing, whatever.”
Head coach Jared Bednar has shifted lines around to find who fits where and has leaned toward keeping Drouin on the top line with MacKinnon and Lehkonen. Mikko Rantanen has shifted back and forth from the No. 1 to the No. 2 line.
“Everybody has to be patient with guys. Val hasn’t played since April, or May and Dru (Drouin) missed five weeks or so, so it’s a long time even though if you practice but they’ll be good for sure.
“We’re excited to go the road though. It’s nice to go on the road sometimes, hang out with the guys and play a little bit of road hockey,” Rantanen said.
The Avs beat Philly on Monday and had two days off before they earned the 2-1 win over the Capitals on Thursday. The extra day off between matchups was significant.
“Two days in between games is great. If you can get a rest — because when it’s every other day, we’re coming at them all the time with information things to improve, things we did well and you try to give them some of those days,” Bednar said on Wednesday. “But to have a day to decompress, get out with your teammates — I saw a bunch of guys walking out for dinner last night in a couple larger groups. You can take a breather, you can take a bit to digest what’s happened in the recent past and still dig in in a practice.”
The team bonding will hopefully pay off and keep that momentum going on the road when it faces the reigning Stanley Cup Champions on Saturday and the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday.
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Good & Bad: Full Team Effort in Avalanche Win
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If they can get those top two lines clicking, they should be okay but it needs to get going soon; they’ve got a lot of games against tough opponents over the next 10 and they need to win more of those than they lose.
LOL!
The Avs will near always lose when they refuse to play defense, since shutting down 29 is a well known commodity!