On Tuesday night, the Avs saw why Nashville owns the best record in the NHL. Though the Avs put up a valiant effort, they were simply left dazed as they were outplayed by Nashville in nearly every aspect of the game, even though the Predators were without Shea Weber for over 17 minutes due to a ridiculous misconduct rule.
After only allowing two teams in the last nine games to eclipse the 30 shot mark, the Avs allowed the Predators to put up 41 against the Avalanche goaltenders; the first time an Avalanche opponent has eclipsed 40 shots since Carolina did on January 13th. Varlamov faced 29 of those shots. While Varly made the some incredible saves, one couldn't help but feel as though the four shots that made their way past him were stoppable. This begs the question: is this long stretch of consecutive games taking its toll on Varlamov? If the Roy still has no confidence in Reto Berra, why is he even still on this team? It may be time to call up Calvin Pickard and take the chance of losing Reto Berra through Waivers just to give Varlamov some more rest.
The Avs head into Dallas Friday night to take on the Stars. The Stars are experiencing their own goalie issues of late. It seems that trading for Jhonas Enroth was not the answer for the Stars. The Stars are winless in their last four, having surrendered 22 goals (one of them a shootout win goal) in that stretch with a combined save percentage of .867. Take away Enroth's relief performance against San Jose and that save percentage is just .834. Not good. Enroth, who took the loss in his Stars debut in Denver on Valentine's Day, is still looking for his first win as a Star and the first win for a Stars back-up goalie in nearly a year. With both the Avs and the Stars eight points out of the playoffs, we'll see if the Stars decide to go with Enroth or Kari Lehtonen against an Avalanche offense that has been scoring of late.
LINES
Talbot-Duchene-Iginla
Landeskog-O'Reilly-MacKinnon
Tanguay-Mitchell-Everberg
McLeod-Cliche-Carey
Hejda-Redmond
Barrie-Guenin
Holden-Stuart
Varlamov
Berra
NOTES
- This is the final meeting of the year between the Avs and Stars. The Avs have won every game thus far. We'll see if they can make it a clean sweep.
- The last win by a Stars back-up? March 11, 2014 against the St. Louis Blues. Goaltender of record: Tim Thomas.
- Still no trades for the Avalanche with the trade deadline just a few days away. Will the Avs stand pat or will they sneak in there at the end?
GAME INFO
Game time: 6:30pm, MT
TV: ALT 2