The Hawks wrap up their massive season-opening road trip tonight against the Colorado Avalanche. This is going to be a nationally broadcast game over on ESPN, so it will also be a late-night game with puck drop coming at 9:30 p.m. central time. If you are a night owl and are going to catch this one, it should be an interesting game. The Hawks are coming off one of their best performances of this short season after beating the Maple Leafs 4-1 on Monday. Unfortunately, things aren’t getting any easier for the Hawks, as the Avalanche are one of the favorites to not only win the Central Division but among the favorites to represent the West in the conference finals (+500 odds tied with the Oilers). They currently find themselves with a 3-0 record, scoring 11 goals and only letting up 4. Last season, these teams faced off three times, with the Hawks finishing up 1-2 against them.
It's really hard to predict what we are going to see tonight from this Hawks team. They have had some really good moments against some really good teams and some really bad moments against a not-so-good Montreal team. It is a bummer that this game is three days after the Leafs game because it would have been great to see them get right back into it and ride the momentum into this one. The guys will hopefully be buzzing knowing they get to head back home after tonight's game, so maybe that will give them a little jump in their step.
Projected line-ups I haven’t seen any confirmation on what the lines could be tonight, but I would have to imagine they will be similar to the last game against the Leafs. The only change I could see being made was Zaitsev coming out and Tinordi going back in.
Hall - Bedard - Donato T. Johnson - Reichel - Raddysh Foligno - Dickenson - Perry Katchouk - Entwistle - Athanasiou Vlasic - Jones Korchinski - Murphy Kaiser - Tinordi/Zaitsev
It will be interesting to see if Coach Richardson will continue with the alternating starts tonight. As I mentioned in my last article, after the way Soderblom played on Monday, he definitely deserves to get back to back starts, especially with 3 days in-between games. However, if he goes with Mrazek, that might not be the worst either, as he has had some good performances against the Avalanche, especially at Bal Arena. Mrazek overall is 4-2-1 in eight games against the Avalanche, with an impressive.941 save percentage, 1.69 GAA, and two shutouts. He is 3-1 in Colorado, with two of those victories being shutouts. Honestly, with the way both goalies have been playing, it isn’t going to bother me who gets the start. I am excited to see if they can both keep their impressive seasons going. That’s going to do it for me for now. I wanted to apologize in advance; there will be shorter blogs coming the rest of this week. I am standing up for my uncle's wedding this weekend, and things are getting hectic. I will get out at least a preview blog for the game on Saturday and will do my best to get some recaps going in a timely manner. I appreciate the understanding, but the important thing here is let's go, Hawks!
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