Colorado Avalanche Game Day: Back on the ice in an attempt to tie the series

The Avalanche: (42-20-8) / (7-3-1)
The Opponent: Dallas Stars: (37-24-8) / (7-5-0)
Puck drop: 4:00 p.m. MT
Watch: NBCSN, Sportsnet, TVA Sports, NHL.tv
Listen: Altitude 92.5, AM 950

After Game 4 was postponed at the request of the players Friday night, the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars will be back on the ice to continue their best of seven series this evening. The Avalanche will be looking to win their second in a row and tie their second round series - forcing a best two out of three later this week.

After being scrutinized for taking the ice Wednesday night - a decision that many players have expressed regret for - the Avalanche and the rest of the NHL players forced the hockey world’s attention to more important issues in the world. Hockey is back on the ice but the past few days have forced a conversation that needed to happen. And hopefully with the help of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, we can start to see tangible change in the sport and the world at large.

If you fall into the group of people who think the players strikes shouldn’t have happened that that for some reason you are owed your “sports as a distraction, remember the words of MLB pitcher Sean Doolittle:

“Sports are like a reward for a functioning society.”

Colorado Avalanche

Coach Bednar mentioned yesterday that he does not expect any of his injured players back in the lineup for Game 4.

The team finally got some scoring from players outside of the top line in Game 3 - that will have to continue if they want to tie the series up today. Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen have been great but the help is necessary to beat a team like Dallas.

Projected Lines

Forwards

Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen

Andre Burakovsky - Nazem Kadri - Valeri Nichushkin

Tyson Jost - JT Compher - Vladislav Namestnikov

Matt Nieto - Pierre-Edouard Bellemare - Logan O’Connor

Defence

Ryan Graves - Cale Makar

Samuel Girard - Ian Cole

Kevin Connauton - Nikita Zadorov

Goaltending

Pavel Francouz

Michael Hutchinson

Dallas Stars

While the player strike forced the hockey world’s attention to other (much more important) things, Defending Big D’s Managing Editor Taylor Baird wrote a great article explaining why the refrain: “we need sports as a distraction” is exactly why the game cancellations were a necessity.

Projected Lines from Last Game

Forwards

Jamie Benn - Tyler Seguin - Alexander Radulov

Mattias Janmark - Joe Pavelski - Denis Gurianov

Andrew Cogliano - Radek Faksa - Blake Comeau

Roope Hintz - Jason Dickinson - Corey Perry

Defence

Esa Lindell - John Klingberg

Jamie Oleksiak - Miro Heiskanen

Andrej Sekera - Taylor Fedun

Goaltending

Anton Khudobin