Colorado Avalanche Game Day: Just stay alive

The Avalanche: (42-20-8) / (7-4-1)
The Opponent: Dallas Stars: (37-24-8) / (8-5-0)
Puck drop: 7:45 p.m. MT
Watch: NBCSN, Sportsnet, TVA Sports, NHL.tv
Listen: Altitude 92.5, AM 950

The task at hand for the Colorado Avalanche tonight is very simple - win or go home. After dropping Game 5 last night, the Avs now face elimination as they trail the Dallas Stars 3-1 in their best of seven series.

After going more than 18 minutes without a shot at the start of Game 4, the Avs found some life in the second and third periods. Unfortunately, it was not enough to overcome the 3-0 hole they found themselves in.

The team will need to play a complete 60 minutes tonight if they hope to force a Game 6 on Wednesday.

Colorado Avalanche

The coaching staff won’t talk about any lineup changes before the game but it’s safe to assume that he’s going to ride with the guys who got them there - live and die with the lineup they’ve been playing.

Unfortunately, Coach Bednar said after last night’s game that the injured players won’t be around for Game 5:

“They’re not ready. They’re not an option for us. We’re not going to play injured players who can’t play.”

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

For those who think athletes and sports reporters should “stick to sports”, Sean Shapiro who covers the Stars for The Athletic wrote a note to address how most in the industry feel about it:

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