After a four day layoff, the Colorado Avalanche visit the Dallas Stars tonight. The Avalanche are hoping to find their road mojo. I think the Avs home / road story has been told enough, so I won’t fatigue your eyeballs with that today. The Stars are struggling around the .500 mark, and recently took the somewhat unorthodox step of firing their GM mid-season.
The Stars have the usual names at the top of their scoring list - Brendan Morrow and Mike Ribeiro have 18 points, Jere Lehtinen has 17, Sergei Zubov has 14, and super-hunky Mike Modano has 10. From the stats, it seems like the Stars are struggling in the depth department. Rebeiro, Morrow and Lehtinen (who I assume are playing together) are +20, while the rest of the team is -40. Yikes.
Jose Theodore will be in net for the Avs. I assume he’ll face Marty Turco for the Stars, but don’t have confirmation of that. With Ian Laperriere out, the Avs have just 12 healthy forwards. Actually, it might be 11, as Andrew Brunette left practice early yesterday after a hard fall. I expect the Avs two call up one - or maybe even two - forwards from Lake Erie today. I often get this wrong, though, so don’t quote me.
Rankings
- Goals per Game: Colorado 7th (3.12), Dallas 13th (2.83)
- Goals Against per Game: Colorado 11th (2.65), Dallas 19th (2.94)
- Powerplay: Colorado 17th (17.1 %), Dallas 10th (21.1 %)
- Penalty Kill: Colorado 19th (18.6 %), Dallas 10th (84.7 %)
- Faceoffs: Colorado 27th (47.4 %), Dallas 24th (48.2 %)
Recent History
Last year, the Avs opened the season against the Stars, took an early 2-0 lead…and ended up losing. That seemed to set the tone for the Avalanche for the entire season. This year, the Avs opened the season against the Stars, took an early 2-0 lead…and won 4-3. Interesting how that works, eh?
The Stars won all 4 games against the Avalanche last year (the Avs did manage one point by taking that first game to OT). Three of the games were high scoring affairs (5-4, 5-4 and 7-5). The Stars outscored the Avalanche 20-15. Tonight’s game is the 2nd of the season (if you read the previous paragraph, you know we won the first game). After tonight, we don’t see Dallas again until March 8th and 9th, when a home and home series closes out the season series.
It’s also worth mentioning that these teams faced each other twice in the preseason, as there was a lot of nastiness in both meetings. The teams combined for 162 penalty minutes, 11 fighting majors and 1 cross-checking major (Laperriere smashing Jussi Jokinen in the face). There was very little in the regular season game, though, and many of the preseason combatants are either injured or in the AHL. Still, there’s always a chance of a little bad blood between these teams.
Hot or Not
Joe Sakic has 11 points (1g, 10a) over the last 10 games and is a +3. Wojtek Wolski has 10 points (5g, 5a) and is a whopping +10.
Jarslav Hlinka has more healthy scratches (2) than points (1) in the last 10 games. And for all his exhilarating flash, Kyle Cumiskey has just one point (an assist) over the last 10.
For what it’s worth, on the coaches morning show on 950 earlier this week he said that Parker would see more ice time to fill in the void of Lappy. I think that when you put that in the universal translator it means that Parker will play 7 minutes instead of 2 and he will roll 3 1/2 lines. It also means that Hlinka will get more ice time, a lot more.
I hope the missing H-link (see, my nickname for him has multiple meanings now!) sees more ice time, as it can only benefit him and his linemates……..
………..unless Parker is one of those linemates……………
……….then again, Laroque scored last night, so who knows….
Things to watch…
Son of Stastny has 22 points. Only TWO of them have been on the road. In seven road games Stastny is minus 8! His shooting percentage is way down and basically he’s not just average on the road so far, he’s been bad. That just makes his home numbers even more impressive. In ten home games he has 20 points and is plus 13.
Hannan is minus nine on the road in seven games.
In a nut shell, the Avs just weren’t very good on the road earlier this year but they’ve been spectacular at home. There’s no real solid trends with only seven games so far but Sakic has been the best forward with seven points but Wolski is a close second because of his strong +/- and the fact he doesn’t have near the ice time that Sakic does on road games, yet he has four points (and he was buried in the back lines early in the year for most of the road games). The other obvious trend is that Stastny and Hannan have been our worst road performers so far. However, both have looked really good lately.
You were right. They just called up Richardson this morning.
Love the RSS feeds to on the right side of the site. Since the game is tonight, that’s a late call up. I thought they would call someone up a few days ago so they could practice with the team at least. I hope Bruno is OK.