Cale Makar and Bowen Byram are back for the Avalanche; soon fans will be, too.

It was a good news kind of morning at Ball Arena.

The Colorado Avalanche began their day by announcing the return of fans to the arena. 4,050 fans will be allowed back to watch Avalanche and Nuggets games beginning April 2.

That particular number represents approximately 22% of the max capacity of Ball Arena and the announcement resulted in the rare public quote from Stan Kroenke himself.

“We are thrilled to welcome Avalanche and Nuggets fans to the newly named Ball Arena for the first time,” said KSE Chairman and Owner Stan Kroenke. “We are grateful to local, state and national health authorities who collaborated with us to get to this point. We also would like to thank our partners at the NHL and NBA, who have worked tirelessly to ensure a safe return for our fans. This is a major first step in our quest to have a fully packed arena again with some of the greatest fans in sports.”

When the Avalanche took the ice for morning skate, it was even more good news as Bowen Byram and Cale Makar were cleared medically and will slide into the lineup tonight as the Avs begin their two-game set against the Minnesota Wild. Greg Pateryn and Dan Renouf will come out of the lineup.

While J.T. Compher is cleared and could play, he will be a healthy scratch tonight. Given the play of the forward corps in the last week, it’s not hard to understand why head coach Jared Bednar would be reluctant to mess with it.

With the changes, the lineup tonight projects to be:

Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen
Saad-Kadri-Burakovsky
Nichushkin-Jost-Donskoi
Calvert-Bellemare-O’Connor

Toews-Girard
Byram-Makar
Graves-MacDonald

Grubauer
Miska