Another Central Division foe on the road awaits the Blackhawks to start the final week of October, as Chicago looks to snap its four-game losing streak when it takes on the Colorado Avalanche on Monday night.
Colorado had a four-game losing streak of its own to start the season but has since course-corrected with five straight victories, including a 5-4 win at home over the Ottawa Senators on Sunday night. The league’s best offense from the prior season has been electric again at the start of this one, scoring at least three goals in eight of its nine games en route to an average of 3.77 per night, which isn’t far from the mark of 3.68 that topped the NHL in 2023-24. Some usual faces are topping the stat columns for Colorado, too: Cale Makar continues to be one of the most exciting blue-liners the game has ever seen with 16 points (3 G, league-best 13 A) in just nine games. Nathan MacKinnon has 15 (4 G, 11 A) and Mikko Rantanen has 13 (4 G, 10 A). Casey Mittelstadt, who joined at the last season’s trade deadline, checks in at 12 points (5 G, 7 A) while the leading goal scorer is Ross Colton with eight — including four on the power play — putting him on pace to blow his prior career-best mark of 22 goals. And this team is still playing without captain Gabriel Landeskog, who hasn’t played since hoisting the Cup in 2022, forward Artturi Lehkonen, who’s recovering from offseason surgery, and forward Valeri Nichushkin, who’s suspended until mid-November while working his way through the NHL/NHLPA’s player assistance program.
But those players won’t cure Colorado’s current biggest ailment, which is keeping the puck out of its own net. Justus Annunen’s numbers (4-1 record, .905 save percentage and 2.48 goals-against average) are OK but incumbent starter Alexandar Georgiev’s are not (1-3, .810, 4.99, respectively). Annunen started in Colorado’s game on Sunday night, so it seems like the Blackhawks will have scoring opportunities with Georgiev in goal. Here’s how the rest of Colorado’s lineup looked against Ottawa:
Changes are afoot in the Blackhawks lineup, per the morning skate. Lukas Reichel has been sent back to the fourth line while the top line now sees Connor Bedard flanked by Teuvo Teravainen and Phillip Kurashev. Replacing Kurashev at 2C is Nick Foligno, all per Ben Pope of the Sun-Times:
Mrazek heads back to the net for his third game in a row, but the shuffling of forwards remains the main attraction here. The Bedard line with Reichel was pretty awful against Dallas, but no trio covered themselves in glory during that defeat. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario with the lineup right now: it seems like there’s no chemistry because the lines don’t stay together that long, but the lines don’t stay together that long because they keep losing. As aforementioned, Colorado’s struggled defensively this season, but the Avalanche can also play — and score — at a pace that the Blackhawks probably can’t match. Losing five in a row and eight of the first 10 is going to start raising some alarms around this team that may already be ringing a bit, though.
Guess we’ll see what happens next, eh?
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Avalanche
43.71% (32nd) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 52.68% (6th)
42.37% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 51.70% (9th)
2.17 (32nd) — Goals per game — 3.68 (1st)
3.52 (29th) — Goals against per game — 3.07 (17th)
46.3% (29th) — Faceoffs — 47.9% (23rd)
16.60% (28th) — Power play — 24.5% (5th)
75.76% (27th) — Penalty kill — 79.9% (12th)
(All stats from last season)
How to Watch
When: 8 p.m. CT
Where: Ball Arena, Denver
TV: CHSN (How to Watch) And if this stuff isn’t sorted out by November we may start posting a lengthy list of places to pirate streams of the game for free. Only, like, sorta kidding.
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720