Preview: Duck hunting for the final time this season

The Colorado Avalanche wrap up their last long road trip of the season in California with Sunday evening’s matchup against the struggling Anaheim Ducks this season. They get to do it on national TV for the first of two games in a row and look to go to 104 points.

Colorado has a great chance to also make some franchise history. They can beat their longest win streak on the road in franchise history with a win tonight and put themselves in a good position heading into the final week.

Colorado Avalanche

The Avs are coming off a wacky game not even less than 24 hours ago. This was against another Southern California team, a very good Los Angeles Kings team.

Despite being outworked all night and beat around the ice, Colorado won 4-3 thanks to an absolute steal from Alexandar Georgiev. He stonewalled the Kings with 38 saves while the depth offense did their part scoring to get the job done.

Goals came from Denis Malgin, Alex Newhook, and Brad Hunt. Should the three continue to do well along with the top guns waking up on offense, this game should be a cakewalk for them to win.

Projected Lines

Evan Rodrigues (9) - Nathan MacKinnon (29) - Mikko Rantanen (96)
Denis Malgin (81) - J.T. Compher (37) - Valeri Nichushkin (13)
Andrew Cogliano (11) - Lars Eller (20) - Logan O’Connor (25)
Ben Meyers (59) - Alex Newhook (18) - Matt Nieto (83)

Devon Toews (7) - Sam Girard (49)
Jack Johnson (3) - Erik Johnson (6)
Kurtis MacDermid (56) - Brad Hunt (17)

Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks continue to struggle at the bottom of the Western Conference as they have all season. Their search for Connor Bedard helped most recently in a 5-4 OT loss at the home of the Arizona Coyotes.

So far, the Ducks have a really good chance to get Bedard as they have the second-least points in the league. Of course, in turn, it has been a difficult season on the ice.

But, Anaheim has gotten the better of the Avs once already this season at Ball Arena. They did get on the losing end last time out just a few weeks ago, but Trevor Zegras will look to be on top of the Stanley Cup champions for one final time tonight,

Projected Lines

Frank Vatrano (77) - Trevor Zegras (11) - Ryan Strome (16)
Adam Henrique (14) - Mason McTavish (37) - Troy Terry (19)
Max Jones (49) - Isac Lundestrom (21) - Jayson Megna (7)
Maxime Comtois (44) - Derek Grant (38) - Sam Carrick (39)

Cam Fowler (4) - Scott Harrington (17)
Simon Benoit (13) - Kevin Shattenkirk (22)
Nathan Beaulieu (28) - Colton White (45)

Goaltenders

The Ducks should go with Lukas Dostal with Olle Eriksson Ek playing yesterday in Arizona and usual number one John Gibson out injured.

The bigger news in net for the Avs is the confirmation of Pavel Francouz returning from injury for the first time since February. His return will be closely watched and hopefully, he returns with a great performance in the crease.