Colorado Avalanche Game Day: Avs swap Dries for Alt ahead of date with Blues

It appears Tyson Barrie will be out of the lineup for a little longer than previous thought as the Colorado Avalanche and Colorado Eagles have swapped forward Sheldon Dries and defenseman Mark Alt ahead of the Avs’ game against the St. Louis Blues.

Dries has four points (2g, 2a) in 15 games with the Avalanche, scoring his first career NHL goal on November 1st in the game we shalt not recall. In five games with the AHL Eagles, Dries has one goal and one assist in five games. Alt has four points in 19 games with the Eagles, and will be joining the NHL squad for the first time this season.

---

Colorado Avalanche

The Avalanche have almost quietly found themselves in the middle of a very impressive winning streak. After winning their sixth in a row in a 6-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Avs will look to make it seven against the Blues. Considering St. Louis is last in the Central Division, and tied for last in the Western Conference with the LA Kings, I think they can do it.

The Buffalo Sabres saw their 10-game winning streak broken yesterday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning in a 5-4 thriller. You can read a recap of that game over at RawCharge.com. It was a heck of a game and could be the start of a new rivalry considering what Jack Eichel did to Ryan McDonagh.

This will be a milestone night for both even-strength superstar Nathan MacKinnon and short-handed superstar J.T. Compher. Nate will be skating in his 400th career NHL game, and Comphy will reach his 100th career NHL game.

In 399 games, MacKinnon has produced 132 goals, and 212 assists, good for 344 points. He’s also sitting on 99 power play points. We’ll see if he makes it a perfect 100 tonight. Compher has 22 goals, and 14 assists (36 points) in 99 games across three seasons so far in the NHL. His four shot-handed points have all been goals.

Forwards

Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen

Tyson Jost - Alexander Kerfoot - Colin Wilson

Matt Nieto - Carl Soderberg - Matt Calvert

Sven Andrighetto - J.T. Compher - Gabriel Bourque

Defense

Samuel Girard - Erik Johnson

Nikita Zadorov - Ian Cole

Patrik Nemeth - Mark Barberio

---

St. Louis Blues

The Blues have lost two in a row, and seven of their last 10 over the past three weeks. They also walk into Pepsi Center having lost four of their last five games on the road. As a result, they are now tied for last in the Western Conference with the lowly LA Kings.

Interim Head Coach Craig Berube — who is 1-3-0 since being promoted to the top job — had this to say about his team heading into tonight’s game. Quote courtesy of NHL dot com.

“You just gotta keep working at it, you’ve got to keep going,” Berube said. “We’ve got to look at lot of good stuff we do, show it, teach it, keep working. When we practice, practice it. We’ll get that (confidence) feeling back. We got it too late in the game (Wednesday). We were right there (for parts of the second and third period). You can’t play the first period the way we played it, which carried over to the second.”

Forwards

Alexander Steen - Ryan O’Reilly - Vladimir Tarasenko

Robby Fabbri - Brayden Schenn - David Perron

Patrick Maroon - Tyler Bozak - Samuel Blais

Zach Sanford - Ivan Barbashev - Oskar Sundqvist

Defense

Joel Edmundson - Alex Pietrangelo

Vince Dunn - Colton Parayko

Jay Bouwmeester - Robert Bortuzzo

---

Starting Goalies

According to The Athletic’s Ryan Clark, Semyon Varlamov will once again get the starters net for the Colorado Avalanche. He’s rocking a .927 save percentage this season with a 9-5-2 record.

Post writer Jim Thomas reports that Jake Allen will get the net for the Blues against the Avalanche. the 28-year-old has a .894 SV% and a 6-7-3 record. He’s been bad, but the Blues have given him literally no run support this season. The team is 24th in the league in terms of goals for, 14 in goals against.