The Blackhawks are playing a close game seemingly every night but they haven’t been able to close the deal. They’ll get a tough test tonight in Denver against an Avalanche team that has an all-star roster on injured reserve and hasn’t started the season as well as they would like. Their goaltending situation is a hot mess, too.
If y’all were looking for a change in the lines to maybe find a spark for the Blackhawks, it looks like we’ll get it tonight. Philipp Kurashev was back on the wing with Connor Bedard at the morning skate. That moved Nick Foligno to the second line center role.
Broadcast Info
Puck Drop: 8:00 PM CT
TV / Streaming: Chicago Sports Network (if/where available)
Radio: WGN 720 AM
Expected Lineups
Chicago Blackhawks
Philipp Kurashev — Connor Bedard — Teuvo Teräväinen
Taylor Hall — Nick Foligno — Tyler Bertuzzi
Ilya Mikheyev — Jason Dickinson — Ryan Donato
Pat Maroon — Lukas Reichel — Craig Smith
Alex Vlasic — Seth Jones
Wyatt Kaiser — Connor Murphy
Nolan Allan — TJ Brodie
🥅 Petr Mrázek
Colorado Avalanche
Ross Colton — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Nikolai Kovalenko — Casey Mittlestadt — Logan O’Connor
Miles Wood — Parker Kelly — Joel Kiviranta
Chris Wagner — Ivan Ivan — Matthew Steinburg
Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Josh Manson
Calvin de Haan — Sam Malinski
🥅 Alexandar Georgiev
Injury Report
Chicago Blackhawks
- Alec Martinez (groin) and Laurent Brossoit (knee) are on IR.
Colorado Avalanche
- Gabriel Landeskog, Artturi Lehkonen, Jonathan Drouin and Tucker Poolman are on IR. Valeri Nichushkin is in the Player Assistance Program.
What to Watch For
- Bedard vs. MacKinnon is worth the price of admission. So is Makar.
- Well well… Kurashev is back riding shotgun with Bedard. Let’s see if that kickstarts his offense.
- Reichel and Smith have good chemistry. I get that some people want him to be higher in the lineup but he needs to win faceoffs to move up. Foligno has the best faceoff percentage on the roster. He’ll be solid there.