Jared Bednar has many reasons to look forward to when all of his forwards are healthy. <\/p>\n
Among those reasons, is an opportunity for the head coach to deploy four lines deep of talent. He\u2019ll get to shift recently acquired Nazem Kadri to center and Nicolas Roy to the wing. And he\u2019d get to find the chemistry he\u2019d like before the playoffs begin next month.<\/p>\n
The Avalanche currently have Gabe Landeskog, Artturi Lehkonen, and Logan O\u2019Connor on the shelf. Ross Colton is also out, albeit we\u2019ll get more clarity on his status ahead of the game in Seattle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to find a rhythm. It\u2019s not just chemistry, it\u2019s a rhythm of how we deploy our guys,\u201d Bednar said on his weekly Altitude Sports Radio appearance on Wednesday. \u201cLike, who\u2019s gonna play with Naz? I want to get him back in the middle of the ice. I\u2019d to get Landy back with [Martin] Necas and [Nathan] MacKinnon. Brock Nelson has been playing a lot with [Valeri Nichushkin] and Colts and maybe we keep that together. And does Lehkonen go with Naz and Roy? Like how does it all shape up? I want to have all those [three] guys at center.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bednar has been using Kadri as the left winger on the top line in Landeskog\u2019s absence. It was a move made out of necessity following a sudden injury to Landeskog, which was announced an hour before Kadri made his re-debut with the club. Roy has been centering the third line since arriving, albeit it\u2019s likely he\u2019s a winger more often than not in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
What Bednar laid out on Wednesday was three lines that would surely give other teams issues. Having Landeskog back on the top line when he returns is a no-brainer. The captain has progressively grown back into that role this season, even with two injuries sandwiched in between the games he\u2019s played.<\/p>\n
But the idea of keeping Colton on the second line and instead using Lehkonen with Kadri is fascinating in many ways. Colton hasn\u2019t had the most offensively productive season, but he\u2019s looked like a good fit with Nelson on the second line. <\/p>\n
Lehkonen and Kadri played together a little bit during the 2022 playoffs \u2014 particularly early in the Western Conference Final series and in the later stages of the Stanley Cup Final. And Roy would be a good fit on the right.<\/p>\n
To get to this point, Colorado needs at least three of its forwards back. One of them, Colton, might play on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe took a shot from a player during the game, and he kind of tightened up, so he\u2019s got an upper-body injury. Hopefully he loosens up and can play in Seattle,\u201d Bednar said postgame, who scored in the first period.<\/p>\n
As for Lehkonen, Landeskog, and O\u2019Connor? It sounds like they all might be returning around the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think by the looks of our injuries, we should have some time with [experimenting]. Those wingers are a couple of weeks out, I guess,\u201d Bednar said on Altitude Sports radio. \u201cThere\u2019s still quite a bit of season here left.\u201d<\/p>\n
The beauty of Colorado\u2019s deep lineup is that Bednar has options. Those nine forwards, in some capacity, are likely going to make up the top nine. That leaves a fourth kine of Jack Drury between Parker Kelly and O\u2019Connor. If O\u2019Connor remains out, Joel Kiviranta slots in nicely. And you\u2019d still have Gavin Brindley and Zakhar Bardakov as extras.<\/p>\n
Bednar has never hesitated to shake up line combinations if things aren\u2019t working. We could very well see Kadri back on the wing with MacKinnon at some point. It\u2019s just as likely that Lehkonen gets to play up there again. But if what Bednar is thinking right now comes true, those two guys would both be on an insanely talented third line together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jared Bednar has many reasons to look forward to when all of his forwards are healthy. Among those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[463,464],"tags":[2320,5,1117,2054,4,60,14,104,718],"class_list":{"0":"post-499576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-playoffs","8":"category-stanley-cup-playoffs","9":"tag-artturi-lehkonen","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-jared-bednar","12":"tag-nazem-kadri","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-nhl-playoffs","15":"tag-stanley-cup","16":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","17":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116216656313792466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}