Just the facts

• The time: Wednesday, 9:30 PM PT
• The place: Balarena, Denver, Colorado
• Place to view: TNT, MAX, TruTV
• Place to listen: 98.5 The sports hub
• An opposing point of view: Mile High Hockey

Know your enemy

• The Avalanche are yet to record a win this season; being 0-3-0
• Three players shoulder most of the burden of scoring points and scoring goals; Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen and Nathan McKinnon. They all have four points.
• If there is a smoking gun to the Avs’ misery; it’s one of two things. One of them is injured; they are missing Devon Toews, Calvin De Haan, Val Nichushkin, Tucker Poolman, Jonathan Drouin and Artturi Lehkonen, as well as Gabriel Landeskog; that has to do with knee problems. That’s one lot of talent away from Burgundy and Blue.
• The other big woes for the Avs is their goaltending, which was spectacularly miserable to start the season. Neither goaltender, Justus Annunen and Alex Giorgiev, currently has an SV% above .800. It is bad there in Colorado.

Game example:

Well, guess this whole “staying competitive” thing turned out to be pretty hard for everyone, right?

The Avs are in an unusual spot for themselves right now, as they just…really, Real bad. They have a lot of their impact players either recovering or just not happy with it. Their goaltending might as well be a shooter’s teacher, and while their remaining big names can still be difference makers, the runaway effect of their weak depth combined with their poor goaltending combined with their painful injury luck is leaving them bottom off the Central Division career. Not a promising start at all for Colorado.

That said, don’t feel comfortable with the prospect of an easy win. Colorado has lost their games miserably, but they shall make yourself work for it.

While it’s still early, Colorado is still one of the better teams at putting shots on net, and with decent quality ones at that. Boston will have to do something they struggled with early and stifle the net front of Colorado’s big names if they want to keep this from turning into yet another boat race of a game. The days of defensive SNAFUs and careless offensive zone board battles are over.

It should make for an interesting match either way, so let’s go for B’s!