After taking two days off and getting back on the ice on Wednesday, the Colorado Avalanche still don\u2019t know who they\u2019re facing in the second round. The Avs swept the Los Angeles King in the first round, capped off with a 5-1 victory in Game 4 last Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars are still in the thick of things. The Wild took a 3-2 series lead on Tuesday night and have an opportunity to close it out at home on Thursday. If Dallas forces Game 7, it\u2019ll take place on Saturday.<\/p>\n
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So how do the Avalanche prepare for the second round, regardless of whether the Wild or Stars advance?<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t answer that. Don\u2019t know who we play,\u201d head coach Jared Bednar said.<\/p>\n
It will be interesting to see how things shift after the team learns who they\u2019ll be facing. The lines were relatively consistent in the four games against the Los Angeles Kings. But it could be something that shifts for the second round.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see who we\u2019re playing, and we\u2019ll pick our lines based on what we think the tasks are and the jobs are for those lines,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cWhat the matchups will look like, home and road, may change.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bednar\u2019s staff is very thorough in their preparation and what they present to their players. They break down teams well and have informative video sessions throughout the season. That gets kicked up a notch in the postseason, when you\u2019re facing a team for pretty much two weeks straight. Some players still like to watch games on their own while the Avalanche have time off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have guys that can tell you every play that happened in last night\u2019s game, and then other guys probably didn\u2019t watch it all,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cFor some guys, it helps, and for some guys, it\u2019s not important to them. And some guys maybe don\u2019t even want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josh Manson Update<\/p>\n
The Avalanche\u2019s veteran defenseman sustained an upper-body injury in the first period of Game 3 in Los Angeles and missed the series finale. When the team took the ice for practice, everyone was accounted for except for Manson. That\u2019s all we know about his status as of right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s [no update],\u201d Bednar said. \u201cStill day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post Avalanche Practice: Awaiting The Next Opponent; Manson\u2019s Status<\/a> appeared first on Colorado Hockey Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After taking two days off and getting back on the ice on Wednesday, the Colorado Avalanche still don\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,147,5,1117,1544,793,2044,38,4],"class_list":["post-562756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-colorado-avalanche","tag-avalanche","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-coloradoavalanche","tag-dallas-stars","tag-hockey","tag-jared-bednar","tag-josh-manson","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-king","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116489599313654389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562756","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=562756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}