Colorado Avalanche Game Day: Avs finish back to back in Arizona

Opponent: Arizona Coyotes (7-4-1)

Where: Gila River Arena — Glendale, AZ

Puck Drop: 7:00 pm MT

Watch: ALT2

Opponent’s Beat: Five for Howling

It’s second game in as many nights for the Colorado Avalanche this evening. They lost game one of the double header to the Dallas Stars last night to a frustrating scoreline of 2-1 in regulation. The team has now flown to Arizona to face the Coyotes, who have gotten their season off to a good start.

The biggest issue from Friday’s loss was the failure of the team to start on time. Coach Jared Bednar was not happy with his team’s effort in the first half of the game, and a strong second half just made the first half all the more infuriating.

The Avs are going to be more tired than their opponents today, but that’s no excuse to not start on time. Attack early and maybe a strong start will make the rest of the game easier.

Colorado Avalanche

Since there was no morning skate for the Avalanche, we’re going to stick with last night’s lineup for this one and we’ll keep you updated on the lines should they change. At the end of the Dallas game, Bednar swapped his top-six around. If these new lines are real, that would be pretty good.

UPDATE:

Finally some common sense. Kadri back at center.

Forwards

Tyson Jost - Nathan MacKinnon - J.T. Compher

Andre Burakovsky - Nazem Kadri - Joonas Donskoi

Matt Nieto - Pierre-Edouard Bellemare - Matt Calvert

Valeri Nichushkin - Vladislav Kamenev - Jayson Megna

Defense

Sam Girard - Erik Johnson

Ian Cole - Cale Makar

Ryan Graves - Nikita Zadorov

Arizona Coyotes

Here are the Coyotes lines from Wednesday night against the Montreal Canadiens

Forwards

Clayton Keller - Christian Dvorak - Phil Kessel

Michael Grabner - Derek Stepan - Vinnie Hinostroza

Barrett Hayton - Nick Schmaltz - Conor Garland

Lawson Crouse - Carl Soderberg (hi!) - Christian Fischier

Defense

Oliver Ekman-Larsson - Jason Demers

Jakob Chychrun - Alex Goligoski

Aaron Ness - Ilya Lyubushkin

Goalies

Since the Avs played last night and the Coyotes didn’t, expect Pavel Francouz and Darcy Kuemper to get the starts in net.