Can Colorado extend their league-leading point streak to nine games with Trent Miner between the pipes?
The Avalanche start a back-to-back situation with the Chicago Blackhawks tonight at the United Center in Chicago, IL. The Avalanche are climbing the standings as they stack points, having secured at least one in their last eight contests. It’s the year of the debut, as Trent Miner will get the starters net tonight against the central’s least successful group.
Colorado Avalanche
The Avalanche of injuries continues as we add Jo Drouin to the list of players on the mend. It feels like Drouin plays for about a week and a half and shuts it down again. It feels like he’s rushing back repeatedly and re-aggravating the same upper-body injury, but that’s just speculation. I’m still unsure if Val Nichushkin will be inserted back into the lineup for Colorado despite his participation in practice in a normal sweater. His injury went from minor/day-to-day to minor/week-to-week quickly. Ivan Ivan was still in the red at practice, and Jared Bednar mentioned that the Avalanche would likely go from 11-7 this evening. That makes Nichushkin’s return highly unlikely.
With the news of Trent Miner’s first career start, I’m throwing my #BoldPrediciton down before today’s (@MHH_LAB) episode.
Avs will limit CHI’s shots on goal — less than 24.#GoAvsGo | @MileHighHockey
— Adrian Hernandez (@AdoHernandez27) January 8, 2025
As for the guys that will lace them up, Mikko has officially tied his career-long point streak with points in 14 consecutive games. Now, it’s about expanding on that for an elite forward who is making himself more and more expensive by the day. No one asked, but I think the Avalanche should also fork it over before he blows up in the playoffs.
I wrote about Devon Toews in our New Year’s Resolution Roundtable, and he’s followed through on my request. The Avalanche is the league’s leader in getting points from defenders, but that had primarily relied on Cale Makar’s torrid scoring abilities before the calendar turned to 2025. Since then, Devon Toews has seven points (4G/3A) in just four contests. Can he add to that tonight?
Projected Lineup:
Artturi Lehkonen — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Ross Colton — Casey Mittelstadt — Jere Innala
Joel Kiviranta — Parker Kelly — Logan O’Connor
Tye Felhaber — Juuso Parssinen — Calvin de Haan
Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Josh Manson
Keaton Middleton — Sam Malinski
Chicago Blackhawks
The Blackhawks lead the season series against the Avalanche, having won 5-2 back in October of 2024, but things should be a little bit different tonight. In their previous showdown, the Avalanche went with Justus Annunen, who gave up three goals in the first period on not a lot of shots on goal. Well, that might not be true with Trent Miner getting his first career start. Hopefully, the Avalanche can limit Chicago’s chances and help a rookie out! The Hawks lost to the struggling New York Rangers by a score of 6-2 on Sunday. Chicago has lost six of their last seven games, all in regulation.
Projected Lineup:
Tyler Bertuzzi — Connor Bedard — Ilya Mikheyev
Taylor Hall — Jason Dickinson — Nick Foligno
Colton Dach — Frank Nazar — Teuvo Teravainen
Craig Smith — Lukas Reichel — Ryan Donato
Wyatt Kaiser — Seth Jones
Alex Vlasic — Louis Crevier
Nolan Allan — T.J. Brodie
Goaltenders
It will be Trent Miner in his NHL debut against Petr Mrazek tonight! If you are looking for pregame coverage, we have you covered at the Mile High Hockey Lab! We will be live at 2:30 p.m. MT on YouTube, Twitch & X!