Colorado Avalanche Gameday: Home for the holidays

The Avs return home this Thanksgiving Week feeling thankful for the run they’re on. They look to continue this trend against the COVID-recovering Ottawa Senators tonight at home.

Ottawa is the first team this year to have games postponed due to COVID-19 breaking out in the side. At one point, there were more than 10 guys in COVID protocol unavailable for selection. Having not played for a week, the Sens will look to find their footing in Gabriel Landeskog’s 700th career game.

Colorado Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche are rolling right now. No asterisks, no “buts,” the Avs are finally in their groove. It’s something fans had been expecting since their opening night win against the Chicago Blackhawks but hadn’t received yet.

On their current four game win streak outscoring opponents 24-8, the Avs will look to keep racking up the tallies against a side that hasn’t been the same since the infamous 2017 Matt Duchene trade. Not only this, but the Avs should be able to take hold of this game, considering the Sens are still recovering from COVID.

With that being said, hopefully COVID won’t be passed on from the Senators to the Avs anytime in this game. While tough and unpredictable, it is something to keep an eye on after tonight’s game. In the meantime, everyone from Friday’s game in Seattle is healthy and expected to play tonight with the returns of Nathan MacKinnon, Bowen Byram, and Pavel Francouz looming.

Here is the projected lineup:

Landeskog-Rantanen-LOC

Nichushkin-Kadri-Burakovsky

Josh-Newhook-NAK

Helm-Megna-Sherwood

Toews-Makar

Girard-J. Johnson

E. Johnson-Murray

Ottawa Senators

The Senators are coming off a week-long break due to a COVID outbreak reaching 10 players and an assistant coach. They played their last game last Sunday in a 4-0 loss to the Calgary Flames.

Obviously Ottawa has had a lot of struggles the last couple of years while being in a rebuilding phase. Fighting through a COVID outbreak and everything being halted over the last week has not helped.

As Avs fans know from last year, coming back after not playing for a week is tough and usually ends up in the loss column. Ottawa’s captain Brady Tkachuk will look to get Ottawa going again with some more pucks in the back of the net.

Here is the projected lineup for the returning Senators:

Tkachuk-Norris-Stützle

Paul-Tierney-Brown

Formenton-Gambrell-Ennis

Sanford-Shaw-Watson

Chabot-Thomson

Mete-Zub

Holden-Brown

Goaltenders

The Avs will look to Darcy Kuemper again tonight as Francouz still recovers and Jonas Johansson was out with an illness unrelated to COVID until this morning. The Senators will go with Filip Gustavsson in their return to the ice.