The Colorado Avalanche were back on the ice on Saturday, skating at Family Sports in preparation for the Western Conference Final.<\/p>\n
They still have at least two, if not three, more skates before Game 1 on Wednesday night. Which likely means the ones closer to that date will matter more. But for now, things didn\u2019t look all that different regarding some of the injured players.<\/p>\n
Cale Makar has not practiced in quite a while, but he\u2019s also appeared in all nine playoff games. That remained the same for now, as he wasn\u2019t an on-ice participant.<\/p>\n
Artturi Lehkonen and Sam Malinski both missed the last two games of the Minnesota series with upper-body injuries. Lehkonen was not on the ice for practice, but Malinski took part in a red non-contact sweater. He remained on the ice for some of the drills but not all of them.<\/p>\n
Josh Manson was on the ice when practice began, but he also did not remain there for long. Manson left the ice before Malinski.<\/p>\n
The last remaining absence was Brent Burns. Like Makar and Lehkonen, he did not take part at all.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not easy to get much information from teams at this time of year. After all, any updates on injuries could often serve as an advantage for the opposition. As for where all of these guys currently stand, Bednar provided a very general update. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all dealing with stuff, they\u2019re day to day,\u201d he said. \u201cI think some of them will practice in the time we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Avs know who they\u2019re facing, but haven\u2019t yet begun in-depth drills to prepare for the Golden Knights. Martin Necas said it was a good first skate to allow them to get back in a groove before ramping it up more in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Bednar reiterated the importance of breaking down how the Knights deploy their lines and preparing specifically for that. The Golden Knights have the center depth that the Los Angeles Kings and Minnesota Wild didn\u2019t. They have Jack Eichel, William Karlsson, Tomas Hertl, and Nic Dowd. <\/p>\n
The Avs are countering with Nathan MacKinnon, Brock Nelson, Nazem Kadri, and Jack Drury. They also have former Golden Knights center Nic Roy playing the wing, but could be used as a center if adjustments are needed.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned for a series preview breakdown in the coming days, including thoughts from Roy, who will be a big piece for the Avalanche against his former team. <\/p>\n
Author\u2019s note: I\u2019m booked to go to Vegas for Games 3 and 4 late next week. A large part of why I\u2019ll be able to make this trip, along with the previous ones, is because of the kind donations from many of you. And, from the bottom of my heart, I do appreciate that. The funds raised to date have all been used for this upcoming trip.<\/p>\n
If you enjoy the coverage here at Colorado Hockey Now and want to chip in to the travel budget for a potential Game 6 on the road and (hopefully) a Stanley Cup Final, please do so here via\u00a0PAYPAL<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0VENMO<\/a>. Thank you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Avalanche were back on the ice on Saturday, skating at Family Sports in preparation for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1223,385,99],"class_list":["post-648357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}