At some point on Wednesday, the Avalanche will board an airplane to take them to Nashville for their game on Thursday. 25 days later, the Avalanche will arrive in Denver in the wee hours of the morning following a flight home from a game in Vancouver. That Canucks game will be the 11th road game of 13 games and will mark the end of a 12,000+ mile journey that will see the Avalanche players home in Denver for, at most, about 8 days.
These next 3 1/2 weeks are not quite make-or-break for your Colorado Avalanche, but it should go a long way to defining the fiber of this team. While road games are certainly more difficult, road trips can be opportunities to come together and it will be interesting to see how these new faces start gelling together (I'm told that late-night hotel pillow fights are great for bonding). Are they really a team to be reckoned with or are they, as Dennis Green might say, who we thought they were?
Here's the upcoming tour:
- Thu, Oct 8th in Nashville (1,157 miles)
- Sat, Oct 10th in Chicago (471)
- Mon, Oct 12th in Boston (984)
- Tue, Oct 13th in Toronto (550)
- Thu, Oct 15th in Montreal (336) - 5 games, all in different cities, in 8 days.
- Sat, Oct 17th in Detroit (559)
- Return to Denver for a couple of days (non-playing) at home (1267)
- Wed, Oct 21st in Minnesota (913)
- Fri, Oct 23rd against Carolina in Denver (912)
- Sat, Oct 24th against Detroit in Denver (0) - the only 2 home games of the stretch, and it's back-to-back
- Tue, Oct 27th in Edmonton (1282)
- Wed, Oct 28th in Calgary (184) - shortest trip of the trip and the 3rd and final set of back-to-backs
- Fri, Oct 30th in San Jose (1546)
- Sun, Nov 1st in Vancouver (980)
- and back home after the game (1463)
It's a trip that would make Clark W. Griswold proud: 12,670 miles (or so) in 25 days, or over 500 miles a day. Granted, the Avs will not be making the trip in a beat-up station wagon with a dead woman strapped to the roof, but it's still a lot of traveling and a lot of time away from home. How the team responds will make for an interesting story. Probably not as entertaining as National Lampoon's Vacation, but, really, is anything?