Morning Flurries: Winners again

It’s good to be back in the win column.

The Avalanche had a ‘must-win’ of sorts on Sunday evening, facing off against the team just ahead of them in the Western Conference standings to battle it out for the second Wild Card spot.

After an optimistic start to the year, Colorado had been on a steep backslide since the end of October, losing five straight and six of their last seven.

The hockey gods occasionally come along with a gift when you most need it, though, and they sure delivered with the schedule Sunday night. The falling-back-to-earth Edmonton Oilers were brought down by a 4-1 final score to give the Avalanche a two-point lead over their conference rivals and a return to a postseason berth.

Is it too early to be truly worrying about that? Sure. Only a handful of teams all but mathematically eliminated themselves at the start of November, so slumps shouldn’t be considered too alarming yet unless they become a pattern.

With the Arizona Coyotes taking home a two-point win of their own, though, it was a step in the right direction to keep Colorado just ahead of the rest of a hungry early season Wild Card race. [Mile High Hockey]

Oh, and this happened:

Around the league, Sunday was the 100th game in franchise history for the Vegas Golden Knights.

One of two players who have appeared in all 100 games so far chatted a bit:

It’s Veteran’s Day and hopefully you’re using the time to either do something for the veteran community or to enjoy the day off work, so we’ll keep it short for today.

Before we go, though, to keep us from getting too immersed in just sports:

Outside of hockey, a class act from Rams veteran LT Andrew Whitworth, who donated his sizable paycheck this week to the victims of the Thousand Oaks shooting.

Whitworth is in the second year of a three-year deal with Los Angeles, and this year’s financial structure is set to pay out a grand total of $11 million when all is said and done. It’s tough to tell exactly what this week’s check will come out to given the more complex bonus structure of his deal this year, but it’s not hard to figure out that it’s going to be a massive chunk of change. Even if the week’s payout is just a portion of his $1.015 million base salary, that comes out to $19,000 prorated over a 52-week schedule or a whopping $63,000 if prorated over a 16-week regular season schedule. So whether his bonuses are included or not, that’s a massive undertaking.

Add in that he’s joining a handful of teammates in auctioning his jersey to support fire relief, and we’d say Whitworth is doing it right.

Speaking of: if you’re looking for a way to donate to the fire relief in Southern California, it looks like Violent Gentlemen are making a statement of their own:

Support your fire department, indeed.