Colorado Avalanche Gameday: A new foe appears

On deck tonight is a historic matchup: the Colorado Avalanche visit Climate Pledge Arena, the home of the Seattle Kraken, for the first time ever. The Avs come in hot, winning their last three games and outscoring opponents 17-5 in that span.

The Kraken are looking to start the weekend off on the right foot against a hot opponent. They need to get going fast, as they’re currently in a five game skid.

Colorado Avalanche

As mentioned before, the Avs are coming in riding a lot of momentum into Seattle. They won last time out just a couple hundred miles North of the border, defeating the Vancouver Canucks 4-2.

The fact of the matter is they’re doing this all without Nathan MacKinnon, who has been out injured. Imagine what momentum this team can have with MacKinnon in the side, along with a couple of other injuries like J.T. Compher and Bowen Byram.

Last game was one of the first games of the season where the Avs left actually healthy. There were no injuries that took players out of the game like usual, and hence we will see the same lineup tonight.

Landeskog-Ratanen-Logan O’Connor

Nichushkin-Kadri-Burakovsky

Jost-Newhook-Nick Aube-Kubel

Helm-Megna-Sherwood

Toews-Makar

Girard-E. Johnson

J. Johnson-Murray

Seattle Kraken

The NHL’s newest franchise has found life pretty tough in the best hockey league in the world. At 4-11-1, they are the bottom feeders of the Pacific Division. They’ve lost five straight games and are nowhere near the potential hype they had behind them.

It is hard to live up to the same standards the Vegas Golden Knights put forth after their cup run in their first season. With a couple of familiar names such as former Avs stars Joonas Donskoi and Phillip Grubauer, you’d expect them be up a little higher in the division.

Grubauer in particular has struggled since his arrival to Seattle. He has a 4-8-1 record with a 3.18 GAA and has not been the same without a strong defense ahead of him. More to come on him later, as here’s the projected lineup from Friday morning’s skate:

Schwartz-Wennberg-Eberle

Tanev-Gourde-Blackwell

Johansson-McCann-Jarnkrok

Donato-Geekie-Donskoi

Oleksiak-Giordano

Soucy-Dunn

Lauzon-Larrson

Goaltending

The Avalanche will go with their new star goaltender in Darcy Kuemper in hopes of winning their fourth straight.

The former Avs star Grubauer has been dropped by the Kraken and will not face his former team because of his poor run of form. Instead, it will be Chris Driedger getting the nod to try and turn the ship for the Kraken.