Follow JJ on Twitter @jaeckel!
Colorado Avalanche at Chicago Blackhawks 6PM Central/5 Mountain Altitude/WGN
THE BUZZ
The Blackhawks go for their 7th straight win tonight against an Avalanche team that's .500 overall (21-18-3), but 14-6-2 in the Western Conference and 12-9-0 on the road. They're also working on a 3-game win streak themselves.
Hawk Killer Semyon Varlamov likely gets the night tonight for the Avs as well.
No official word but tonight is the night new Hawk Richard Panik is believed to be cleared to debut.
As a follow on to my earlier report of a regular Tampa bay scouting presence in Rockford of late, the Hawks were one of 7 teams scouting the Syracuse Crunch (Tampa/AHL) last night.
THE NUMBERS
GFG/GAG COL. 2.90/2.79 CHI. 2.77/2.35
POWER PLAY COL. 21.8% (5TH) CHI. 22.5%. (3RD)
PENALTY KILL COL. 79.3%. (21ST) CHI. 81.7. (12TH)
PROJECTED LINEUPS
Colorado
Tanguay MacKinnon Duchene Martinsen Grigorenko Iginla Landeskog Soderberg Comeau McLeod Mitchell Skille
Beauchemin Bodnarchuk Holden Barrie Redmond Guenin
Varlamov
Chicago
Shaw Toews Hossa Panarin Anisimov Kane Desjardins Danault Teravainen Panik Rasmussen Garbutt
Keith Hjalmarsson Gustafsson Seabrook Van Riemsdyk Rozsival
Crawford
I'll recap tomorrow,
JJ