Nicolas Aube-Kubel – C- Everyone will be pointing to getting him out of the lineup in place of Newhook, but I don’t know if that happens. NAK was on the ice with the net empty because he at least had some jump going. Andre Burakovsky – D It’s really getting hard to defend the constant pull-up, peel back and look…...

Hockey, like most facets of life I suppose, is built on some time-worn cliches that get us through things like game recaps. They become cliches, however, because at the core is almost always some level of truth found in there. One of hockey’s great truths is that you’re never in trouble in a playoff series until you lose a home…...

“You are who you want to be most.” – Brent Slade You don’t need to go searching for Mr. Slade as a famous individual. He was simply an old friend of mine who was kind and patient enough to listen to me lamenting how much I wished a life situation had turned out differently. As I bemoaned all the circumstances…...

Given his team is 5-0 in the postseason for the second straight season, there’s a sneaky amount of pressure on Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar right now. It’s not the kind of pressure that results in a coach losing his job (if that was ever even a possibility, it ended with the tidy sweep of the Predators), but with…...

The Avs get an elite performance out of Sam Girard and Josh Manson on their second pairing to escape OT with a W in Game 1 against the Blues. With dominant 5-on-5 play across the board, the Avs should feel confident going deeper into the series. https://youtu.be/cq_ym2Nbf3E

Nicolas Aube-Kubel – B In the first period, I was ready to declare it time to see Alex Newhook. But as the game went on, NAK started to turn up the heat. Threw a big hit on Kyrou in overtime along the wall, and played a big role in the Girard goal. He’s doing what’s asked of him. Andre Burakovsky…...

This morning, Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar addressed the media for what felt like the 20th time since his team last saw game action. Bednar wasn’t his usual chatty self, there were actually several times he gave one-word or one-line answers. I asked him what he was looking for out of Sam Girard, given the way his postseason performance…...

Here we go, Round 2 is finally all set and we are ready to go. We did ok in the first round in terms of our series predictions, but our props missed a little more than we would like. Let’s rectify that this time around, yeah? Tampa Bay +145 vs. Florida If you think Tampa is winning, this is great…...

What a Round 1. That was one of the more chaotic opening rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs that I can remember. The individual games weren’t always super close, but the overall series were fantastic. Plenty of interesting storylines, and some great matchups set up in Round 2, here’s where I see every team that’s still standing. 1. Tampa Bay…...

The Colorado Eagles advanced to Round 3 in the Calder Cup Playoffs with their win over the Ontario Reign on Sunday night. The Eagles neatly wrapped things up with Henderson in the 1st Round, but Round 2 asked just a bit more of them in a best-of-5 with Ontario getting the home-ice advantage in the final 3 games of the…...

Right after Nathan MacKinnon scored the empty-net goal that would ice the Colorado Avalanche’s first-round sweep of the Nashville Predators, I sat inside Bridgestone Arena and forced myself to stop for just a second and appreciate what I was witnessing.  It wasn’t about the sweep, and it honestly wasn’t even about the result of the series. It was about how…...

We caught up with Colorado Avalanche prospect Sean Behrens at the beginning of the season. He was an incoming freshman at the University of Denver with only 10 regular-season games under his belt, and the Pioneers had just swept Western Michigan at home. We learned about the program, his role on the top powerplay unit (at which 7 of his…...

Let’s start this Round 2 preview between the Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues by establishing something that I think is important: This is not last year and the regular-season meetings between these two teams do not matter. There might be plenty of optimism about the Avs-Blues matchup in Colorado, but last year’s sweep of the Blues in Round 1…...

Well, Calgary Flames head coach Darryl Sutter gave everyone an amusing soundbite when he mentioned being a wild card team would be “a waste of eight days.” Turns out, the Avs only needed seven. Upon getting their fourth sweep in Avalanche history and second in as many years, the Avs are off to the second round for the fourth consecutive…...

Nicolas Aube-Kubel – C I didn’t like his game the majority of the evening, but then in the third period, he had a legendary shift where he protected the puck along the boards and kept control for around a 40-second shift. It’s just too inconsistent with him. Andre Burakovsky – A He got on the scoreboard in the most Burky…...

They say that the fourth and final win you need to close out a Stanley Cup Playoff series is the hardest one to get, and the Colorado Avalanche got a good reminder of that as they were looking to put the Nashville Predators in the rearview mirror and move on to Round 2. It was a tentative crowd inside Bridgestone…...

Despite a scary moment with Darcy Kuemper the Avs continue to make the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs look routine. With Gabe Landeskog leading the way Nashville is unable to keep up. https://youtu.be/eVbFe7C5ogg

The Colorado Eagles finished 3rd in the Pacific Division and played the 6th place Henderson Silver Knights in a best-of-3 series to kick off the Calder Cup Playoffs this last week.  Game 1: It was an exciting weeknight affair. Because the Eagles were the higher seed, they secured home ice and challenged Henderson for Game 1 on Wednesday at the…...

Nicolas Aube-Kubel – C+ He had one issue along the boards in the first but managed to avoid the big ones like he had last game. Pretty quiet game overall, with his best shift coming in the third in the offensive zone that ended with a good backcheck to force a turnover. Andre Burakovsky – C+ Drew a penalty, and…...