The Avalanche have a tough turnaround game, playing at Arizona on Saturday following their 2-1 home loss to Dallas on Friday.
Regardless, I would anticipate they'll come out strong and, hopefully, put in a full effort for the entire game.
If that doesn't happen, well, I'd anticipate coach Jared Bednar to blow a proverbial gasket, considering what he had to say in a stern but calming tone after the loss to the Stars.
"Right now we're just coming out to play hockey, we're not coming out to win the hockey game," he said. "That's what I see."
The Avalanche lost all three games on the homestand (0-2-1) and have gone 1-3-1 after their 7-0-1 start.
My NHL.com GAME RECAP
Bednar was especially upset with how the team played for the first 30 minutes, when they fell into a 2-0 hole.
"Our lack of focus and execution was terrible for the first half of the game," he said.
The Avalanche outshot the Stars, who are on a 5-1-0 roll, 26-14 after Roope Hintz scored while shorthanded -- his second goal of the game -- at 5:39 of the second period and 39-29 for the game.
But they couldn't get a puck behind goalie Anton Khudobin after Nathan MacKinnon, who had a franchise record-tying 12 shots on goal, scored on a power play at 9:54. Nazem Kadri's goal 30 seconds earlier was overturned after a video review showed a goal post had come off its mooring before the puck entered the net.
The Avalanche got a power play out of it anyway because J.T. Compher was tripped by Andrew Cogliano, and MacKinnon responded with his eighth goal of the season to stretch his point streak to 13 games.
"That was the turning point, where we decided to start playing and from there on out we dominated the rest of the game," Kadri said. "Their goaltender made a few nice saves. It was a little too late."
No doubt the Avalanche absolutely miss injured forwards Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, but this is where players like Tyson Jost (no points in the past five games) and Andre Burakovsky (one assist in the past six games) have to take up some of the slack.
MacKinnon has six points (three goals, three assists) in the past four games, all four without Rantanen and the past two without Landeskog.
"We're going to miss their leadership a little bit, but at the end of the day (the remaining players are) pros, they're here to play the game, play it hard, be engaged, and we weren't," Bednar said. "They're all NHL players, they're all good players. They were good the second half of the game. I wouldn't say really good, but we were good. So there's no excuse for not being good for (the previous) 30 minutes."
Bednar swapped Kadri and Burakovsky on the first two lines in the second period. Kadri moved from left wing on the top line with MacKinnon to his natural center position on the second line with Jost (who went from center to left wing) and Compher. MacKinnon was in the middle with Burakovsky and Joonas Donskoi.
Pavel Francouz is expected to start in goal against Arizona.
"They have to decide and get themselves ready to play," Bednar said. "I can't do that for them. I can help them, we can give them a game plan. I don't even want to talk Xs and Os (Friday) because it doesn't matter what they were."
Bednar said he can't always sense how the team will come out for a game.
"Sometimes over the course of time you can get the feeling like, 'Do we got to try and spark these guys?' " he said. "It's too early, I don't know. I've liked the juice in the room sometimes and we go out and we're not engaged and ready to play. And then other times we're quiet and we go out and we're good, so it's hard to say.
"Over time you kind of get the sense and you kind of talk to some guys, bounce around the locker room. I thought we were focused (Friday), but we didn't come out focused. We didn't come out with any type of fire."
*****
MacKinnon has 18 points (eight goals, 10 assists) in his 13-game streak, which moved him ahead of Joe Sakic (1988-89) for the fourth-longest streak from the start of a season in Colorado/Quebec Nordiques history.
MacKinnon has the longest season-opening streak in the NHL since Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg had a 17-game streak Oct. 3-Nov. 11, 2007. Zetterberg had 27 points (13 goals, 14 assists).