An easier November lies ahead for the Colorado Avalanche

The October scares for the Colorado Avalanche have come to a close. The month of October ended with two straight wins against division rivals St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild to bring their record back to 4-4-0 with an even .500 record.

The Avs had a tough October, even with a complete opening night victory over the Chicago Blackhawks. The toughest moments came from the East Coast road trip, where the Avs struggled with suspensions and injuries in a three-game road trip.

With a lot of down time between games in November with easier opponents, the Avs should be able to take more control over their season. With big names like Devon Toews, Pavel Francouz, Mikko Rantanen, Andre Burakovsky and Valeri Nichushkin still out with injury, this should give them more time to get healthy and ready to go hopefully by the end of the month. It was just announced today that Cale Makar will be out of the team due to an upper body injury as well.

The Avs just cannot catch a break, with guys being out of the lineup since day one. Let’s hope that we get the injury bug out of the way early this year and have a fully healthy team going into the latter stages of the season. Nonetheless, here is the schedule breakdown for the Avalanche this month, with a side of Sam Girard and some puppies:

With only six games in three weeks, the Avs have lots of time to rest up and get healthy to be at the top of their game against these opponents. A back-to-back is up first against the Columbus Blue Jackets, whose struggles from last season are looking to be reversed this season. The Jackets are at 5-3 to start the year.

The San Jose Sharks (5-3) split up a couple of matchups against the Vancouver Canucks (3-5-1) and includes a visit to Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle for the Avs’s first ever matchup against the newly-founded Seattle Kraken (1-5-1).

The busiest week of the month happens to be the holiday week, with home games against the struggling Ottawa Senators (3-5), Anaheim Ducks (3-4-3) and Nashville Predators (4-4). There’s also a visit to the Dallas Stars (3-4-1) after Thanksgiving on Black Friday.

The combined record for the Avs opponents this month is 27-33-6. Some teams are certainly above where they were projected at earlier on this season. These include the San Jose Sharks and Columbus Blue Jackets, who could give the Avs a challenge, let alone any club this month.

While it is still very early on in the season, the Avs should come out of this month with a fairly positive record. It’ll shoot them back towards the top of the Central Division as things start to play out for the season.

With the majority of games this month against opponents in the Western Conference, these will be important games for the Avs to take control of as well. There will be more at stake in these games than there were for the first road trip the Avs went on out East, where it was less of an issue dropping points.

We can only hope the Avs get healthy and stay healthy in a month where they can take control of the division and their season. What are your predictions for how the month of November will go? Let us know!