Colorado Avalanche Game Day: Road trip continues in Boston

The Colorado Avalanche and Boston Bruins will face off in a matinee contest today at TD Garden in Boston Massachusetts. The Avalanche are fresh off a 5-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres, and the Bruins just beat the Senators in overtime on Saturday. The Avalanche are dominant when playing in Boston, having lost there just twice in twenty-four years.

COLORADO AVALANCHE

Colorado provided fans with a bit of angst in their last game against the Sabres. The Sabres tied things at three goals apiece heading into the third period. Good teams find a way to win and that’s exactly what Colorado did getting a timely goal from Alex Newhook and then an empty netter from Mikko Rantanen. They will need to play better defensively in order to beat the Bruins.

This will be the first time these two teams play since the Avalanche came back to beat Boston in a game that saw Nathan MacKinnon injured early. Taylor Hall was chased around for almost the entire period after landing a hit on MacKinnon that sent MacKinnon’s own stick into his face. MacKinnon is back just less than a month after requiring facial surgery and has scored two goals in the last three games.

FORWARDS

Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen

Valeri Nichushkin - Nazem Kadri - Andre Burakovsky

Tyson Jost - JT Compher - Nicolas Aube-Kubel

Darren Helm - Alex Newhook - Logan O’Connor

DEFENDERS

Devon Toews - Cale Makar

Jack Johnson - Samuel Girard

Ryan Murray - Erik Johnson

BOSTON BRUINS

The Bruins will be without forward Brad Marchand who is still serving suspension time for taking a swipe at Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry. Marchand is one of the NHL’s most skilled and opportunistic offensive talents so not having him against Colorado will be costly.

Boston hopes to find some retribution today after allowing the Avalanche to stage a comeback victory the last time they met. That victory extended a Colorado Avalanche home victory streak to seventeen games and Ball Arena was ablaze. This will be the last time the Avalanche and Bruins face-off this regular season.

FORWARDS

Taylor Hall - Patrice Bergeron - David Pastrnak

Trent Frederic - Charlie Coyle - Craig Smith

Jake Debrusk - Tomas Nosek - Curtis Lazar

Erik Haula - Jack Studnicka - Nick Foligno

DEFENDERS

Urho Vaakanainen - Charlie McAvoy

Matt Grzelcyk - Brandon Carlo

Mike Reilly - Derek Forbort

GOALTENDERS

Will will likely see Darcy Kuemper in net for the Avalanche. Kuemper has come on strong as the season has progressed and looks to be the true number one that GM Joe Sakic set out to acquire. His GAA and SV% have seen significant improvement since January and are now sitting at 2.40 GAA and a .920 SV%.

Boston is going with Jeremy Swayman between the pipes. Swayman has been solid this season, posting a 2.14 GAA and a .923 SV%. He comes in having given up just three goals in his last three appearances.