With crucial back-to-back road games against Minnesota and Winnipeg this weekend, starting with Saturday's visit to Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, the Avalanche spent a significant portion of practice Friday working on their anemic power play.
The Avalanche have failed to convert 22 consecutive chances in the past seven games and are in a 3-for-43 drought in 15 games.
They could certainly use defenseman Tyson Barrie, who missed Thursday's game because of a hip flexor injury, but the Denver Post reported he didn't take part in the morning skate Saturday and will be out again.
Here are Saturday's game notes for the game against the Wild.
The teams are meeting for the first time since the first two games of the season, 5-0 and 3-0 Wild wins.
"We're not happy about the power play and the players are not happy about the power play," coach Patrick Roy said. "We all agree that our play 5-on-5 is pretty solid -- our neutral zone forecheck, our forecheck, our D-zone coverage, our tracking -- we're playing a good 5-on-5 game. Obviously if we could generate more offense from our power play it's certainly going to help the team.
"We want to make sure we move the puck fast when we possess the puck in our set-up in the O-zone, we want to make sure we see those options maybe faster. But after 20, 30 seconds we have to have two shots. It forces us to compete to get those rebounds. It forces us to compete to get the puck back and restart a new set-up and try to bring more pucks at net. The compete level is what we're going to have to work on in the next few practices."
The Avalanche (22-19-11, 55 points) are ninth in the Western Conference, four points behind Vancouver (28-19-3, 59 points), which holds the second wild-card position. The Canucks have played two fewer games and have a 26-15 lead in ROW -- regulation and overtime wins, the tiebreaker.
The Wild (24-20-6, 54 points) are 10th in the West and also have played two fewer games than the Avalanche. They own a 22-15 lead in ROW. Minnesota has won four games in a row and is 6-1-1 in the past eight games.
The Wild have been a different team since acquiring goalie Devan Dubnyk from Arizona on Jan. 14 in exchange for a 2015 third-round draft pick. Dubnyk has gone 6-1-0 with three shutouts, a 1.48 goals-against average and .943 save percentage since the trade.
The 6-foot-6 Dubnyk always seems to play well against the Avalanche. He has an 8-5-1 career record against Colorado with one shutout, a 2.24 average and .934 save percentage.
Wild forward Matt Cooke will miss 5-6 weeks after undergoing surgery for a sports hernia.
Goalie Semyon Varlamov will start against the Wild and Jets. He has a 10-5-2 record in his past 17 starts with three shutouts, a 1.97 average and .937 save percentage.
The Avalanche last scored a power-play goal Jan. 15 in Florida when Nick Holden scored in the third period of a 4-2 win.
The players remain baffled by their inability to produce with an extra skater in 5-on-4 situations. The Avalanche are next-to-last in the NHL on power plays, just ahead of Buffalo.
"I don't have any answers for it," said Matt Duchene, who has gone five games without a goal and has one power-play goal this season. "We're working on battling harder and skating better. When it comes, it's going to come in bunches, but you just have to grind it out until it comes I guess. It's something we just have to keep working on."