Avalanche at Blues, Game 43 Preview

The Avalanche is coming off an impressive shut out win in Chicago last night, handing the Blackhawks their third straight loss. The Hawks were on the second leg of a back-to-back set, so fatigue may have factored into things. The Avs are facing the same situation themselves tonight as the team moves the show down the road for a tilt against the St. Louis Blues in St. Louis.

Fatigue is not the only challenge facing the Avalanche tonight. The Blues have the league's best home record (16-3-2) and have not yielded a game in their building for over a month. David Backes is still putting up the points, leading the Blues with 28 of them. He's had 2 goals and 8 assists in his last ten games, in fact. And lest you forgot, he does a pretty good job at scoring them against the Avs.

Although Jaroslav Halak has done a stellar job for the Blues lately, he's played the last two, and there's a chance former Avalanche Brian Elliott will get the nod tonight. Coach Sacco has already stated that Jean-Sebastien Giguere will be in net for the Avs.

Same ole story lines abound with these two teams; curses of former players and money on boards be damned, though. The Avalanche is playing some good hockey right now, and there's no reason to think they can't finish out this road trip a perfect 4-0. It won't be easy, but if it was easy, there wouldn't be any fun in it. Speaking of fun, the Avs are on a 4-game win streak, having won 9 of their last 10. Oh, and they also are 8th in the West and 13th in the league right now. Don't get too cozy with that information because the standings change after every game lately. It's still fun, though.

Tale of the Tape, courtesy of NHL.com:

	Stats
42	GP	40
23	W	23
18	L	12
1	OT	5
47	P	51
0.560	P%	0.638
2.55	G/G	2.58
2.76	GA/G	2.10
19.1	PP%	13.9
82.1	PK%	81.6
31.0	S/G	30.9
29.0	SA/G	26.8
51.6	FO%	48.8