Colorado Avalanche Gameday: Swimming with the Sharks

The Colorado Avalanche finish up their two-game road trip to California in the Northern part of the state, visiting the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks sit an at even .500 record, outside of the playoff race by some margin. They’ll look to slow up the Avs tonight.

Colorado Avalanche

The Avs are still in the midst of the trade deadline, with all eyes on Claude Giroux and any updates on whether or not he’ll come to the Mile High City. He looks to be favoring South Beach and the Florida Panthers at the timing of the release of this article but time will tell.

The Avs have made a couple of moves within the last week that we’ll see in action. We saw Josh Hanson’s debut in burgundy and blue Tuesday night in LA in their 3-0 win over the Los Angeles Kings where he recorded a team-high of 10 hits.

Tonight we’ll see Nico Sturm play with the ‘A’ on his chest after his trade with Tyson Jost from the Minnesota Wild. He will fill in Jost’s role in the bottom six in a hopeful winning effort. This Avs team looks to build momentum heading into the playoffs a little more than a month away.

Projected Forwards

Valeri Nichushkin (13) - Nathan MacKinnon (29) - Mikko Rantanen (96)

Alex Newhook (18) - Nazem Kadri (91) - Andre Burakovsky (95)

Logan O’Connor (25) - J.T. Compher (37) - Nicolas Aube-Kubel (16)

Kurtis MacDermid (56) - Nico Sturm (78) - Darren Helm (43)

Projected Defenders

Devon Toews (7) - Cale Makar (8)

Jack Johnson (3) - Erik Johnson (6)

Ryan Murray (28) - Josh Manson (42)

San Jose Sharks

The Sharks will playing the second of a back-to-back tonight on home ice. They were in LA last night also playing the Kings. They came out on the losing end though in the same scoreline as the Avs did on Tuesday night, losing 3-0.

There had been rumblings of whether Tomas Hertl was going to be shipped out of San Jose. This included to teams such as the Avalanche who were looking to improve their side with rentals with San Jose out of the playoff picture.

Hertl and the Sharks locked up an 8x8 deal to keep him in San Jose for the foreseeable future. The Sharks organization will certainly be building around Hertl in the future and rely on him tonight along with veterans Erik Karlsson and Brett Burns to get the Sharks back to winning ways.

Projected Forwards

Timo Meier (28) - Logan Couture (39) - Jonathan Dahlen (76)

John Leonard (43) - Tomas Hertl (48) - Alexander Barabanov (94)

Andrew Cogliano (11) - Nick Bonino (13) - Matt Nieto (83)

Rudolfs Balcers (92) - Scott Reedy (54) - Noah Gregor (73)

Projected Defenders

Jaycob Megna (24) - Brett Burns (88)

Jacob Middleton (21) - Erik Karlsson (65)

Marc-Edouard Vlasic (44) - Nicolas Meloche (53)

Goaltenders

Darcy Kuemper is unbeatable at the moment, recording two straight shutouts and allowing only one goal in his last 105 shots faced. It would be a surprise to see anyone but Kuemper in net once again for the Avs.

James Reimer played last night in LA in a losing effort, so it should be second-string goaltender Zachary Sawchenko getting the nod at the SAP Center tonight.