Colorado Avalanche Gameday: Last stop in Philly

The Colorado Avalanche finish their four-game road trip tonight with the Philadelphia Flyers at Wells Fargo Center. Colorado won 7-5 the last time these two met last season.

Colorado Avalanche

The story of the Avalanche early on this season has been heavily influenced by the myriad of injuries their roster has sustained. We saw yet another key fixture of Colorado's top-6 leave Colorado's contest with the Bruins after Artturi Lehkonen was taken down in front of the net in a suspect manner. Charles Hudon will get the call-up in the wake of this latest addition to the catacombs of hockey ailment.

Still, Colorado should have just enough talent to compete with a Flyers team that still hasn't quite settled into a new identity with coach John Tortorella at the helm.

Projected Lineup:

Alex Newhook — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Andrew Cogliano — J.T. Compher — Logan O'Connor
Charles Hudon — Jean-Luc Foudy — Alex Galchenyuk
Dryden Hunt — Jayson Megna — Anton Blidh

Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Erik Johnson
Jacob MacDonald — Andreas Englund

Note: If this looks like an AHL roster to you, 8 of the 18 players here are typically playing for the Colorado Eagles.

Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers are facing injury woes of their own this season, and, as I previously mentioned, the Flyers are still working things out after an off-season change to the coaching staff. A brief moment of struggle is typical in a situation like they have in Philly. With that said, I'd expect them to get better as the season wears on or get used to hearing more post-game pressers like this one.

Projected Lineup:

Kevin Hayes — Noah Cates — Travis Konecny
Scott Laughton — Morgan Frost — Joel Farabee
Tanner Laczynski — Lukas Sedlak — Owen Tippett
Nicolas Deslauriers — Patrick Brown — Zack MacewenI

Ivan Provorov — Rasmus Ristolainen
Travis Sanheim — Justin Braun
Nick Seeler — Tony Deangelo

Note: Ryan Ellis, Sean Couturier, Bobby Brink, Wade Allison, and James Van Riemsdyk are all on IR, with Cam Atkinson listed as day-to-day.

Goaltending

It will be Alexandar Georgiev against Carter Hart in net tonight. Carter Hart is one of hockey's young keepers with a lot of skill and potential, which has begun to show statistically. Georgie's numbers have started to suffer a bit due to the dwindled roster in front of him, but he's still having a good year.