The Colorado Avalanche will welcome the Vancouver Canucks to Ball Arena tonight for a Western Conference matchup. As the NHL regular season nears its end, Colorado\u2019s magic number is six points (three wins) to win the Presidents\u2019 Trophy, and the team is currently leading the race for last place in the league.<\/p>\n
The Avalanche are fresh off a dominant 9-2 performance over the Calgary Flames and will look to secure another win, but this time without Cale Makar, who is out \u201csome time\u201d with an upper-body injury. Vancouver has lost six straight games, including a 4-2 defeat to Vegas their last time out.<\/p>\n
The Avalanche have an ideal situation as they look to win their 50th game of the season tonight. The matchup against Calgary set up as a lopsided one and played out that way. Tonight\u2019s contest leans even harder into that setup.<\/p>\n
This might be a good time for the bottom six to work toward some milestones and gobble up some minutes. We are in full-on whale-watch with Parker Kelly having 18 goals this season, just two shy of the 20 required for Guerilla Sports Meghan Angley to adopt an elephant.<\/p>\n
The top six are narrowing in on some incredible numbers as well, with Nathan MacKinnon just two goals shy of his previous best (51) in a single season, and Martin Necas nine points shy of 100, which would be a first in his career.<\/p>\n
MacKenzie Blackwood
Scott Wedgewood<\/p>\n
The Canucks are in full-on tank mode, although most say that\u2019s not really a thing in hockey. Albeit taboo, when you trade away Quinn Hughes and J.T. Miller but hold Elias Pettersson hostage through a -90 goal differential season with a prospect like Gavin McKenna on the horizon, let\u2019s be honest. I think tanking is exactly what we are seeing in Vancouver, and I don\u2019t blame them. Zeeve Buium and Elias Pettersson should be a good start to the next era, but at what point will Pettersson burn out?<\/p>\n
Kevin Lankinen
Nikita Tolopilo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Avalanche will welcome the Vancouver Canucks to Ball Arena tonight for a Western Conference matchup. As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5128],"tags":[894,29254,3597,5,4,893,27,5313],"class_list":{"0":"post-535088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver-canucks","8":"tag-canucks","9":"tag-colorado-avalanche-game-coverage","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche-previews","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-vancouver","14":"tag-vancouver-canucks","15":"tag-vancouvercanucks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116330641946216325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535088","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=535088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}