Morning skate notebook: Short-handed again

Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news:

But, Sam Girard is out again. He’s skating, handling pucks, taking shots, doing everything you’d want a hockey player to do. But the Avalanche has deemed him too unwell to play in tonight’s Game 4 against Nashville at the Pepsi Center (8 p.m.).

It’s obviously not a serious injury. He could be back for Game 5 Friday night in Nashville. But it’s still a huge underdog situation, folks. The Avs have to try and beat a very good Nashville team again without a top puck-hander. They were already missing one, in Erik Johnson, and Girard’s absence means we’re likely to see a lot of icings and desperation clearout attempts like we saw in the second half of Game 3, whereas with a guy like Girard he can just skate you out of trouble.

It’s gonna have to be the same formula then: Hope to get out to a good start, get a great game from the top line and hope there’s enough D and goaltending to even this thing up. Otherwise, it’ll be back to Nashville in a potential closeout game in front of that crowd. There will be no lineup changes from Game 3.

I’m going to leave you with some uncut audio from the locker room this morning. Pretty routine stuff for a guy like me, but we hear you when you say you really like these audio clips, in their entirety. Morning skate quotes are always pretty much the same, but it probably means different things to different people and we’re happy to let you into the locker room, as it were.

First up, Nathan MacKinnon:

Next up, Tyson Barrie:

And finally, a couple minutes with David Warsofsky: