If all goes well in the next two days, defensemen Jan Hejda and Ryan Wilson will return to the Avalanche lineup for Saturday night's pivotal Central Division game against Minnesota at the Pepsi Center.
"That's the plan, but everything could change," coach Patrick Roy said after practice Wednesday. "I think both are going to play Saturday."
Wilson has missed 15 games with a back injury and Hejda three with a right knee injury that looked a lot worse when he fell awkwardly into the boards a week ago in Edmonton.
"I thought at first he hurt his ankle," Roy said of Hejda. "When I heard it was the knee, woo, I was already pretty relieved. You never know with these things. We were lucky."
Wilson took part in the team's full practice Wednesday and Hejda, who wore an orange non-contact jersey, skated in all the drills.
"They looked good," Roy said. "I spoke to Jan and Jan said he was much better than he anticipated. He said it was only when he made some pivots that he felt it a little bit. But overall he said he was good. And Willie said he was pain free during the entire practice, which in my book was very positive."
Wilson, who has sustained one injury or another in each of his five NHL seasons, has four assists and a plus-2 plus/minus rating in 10 games. Hejda has been the Avalanche's best defenseman. He has three goals, six assists and a plus-17 rating in 26 games.
The Avalanche won't have to make a roster move once Wilson is activated from injured reserve because 22 players are on the active roster, one under the league maximum.
Nick Holden and probably Tyson Barrie or Cory Sarich will be the odd men out Saturday if Hejda and Wilson feel well enough to play.
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Right wing Patrick Bordeleau won't win any style points for the way he bangs and crashes around the net, but some of his teammates could follow his lead Thursday night in Winnipeg in an attempt to end some long scoring slumps.
The 6-foot-6 Bordeleau and his linemates, Cody McLeod and Marc-Andre Cliche, have been ferocious forecheckers on the fourth line and have produced six goals and 10 assists.
Bordeleau scored his career-high fourth goal Tuesday in the Avalanche's 3-1 loss to Phoenix. It might have been a lucky goal -- they all count -- but was the result of hard work next to the net.
"They don't ask how you did it, just ask how many," Bordeleau said. "That's our role, that's what we have to bring -- go to the net hard. That's what we're not doing enough right now and it's what we have to do.
"We have a lot of good players up front and lately we're not scoring goals because we're not sacrificing ourselves enough. We don't go to the net enough, we don't put pucks (on net) enough. Maybe we're trying to be a little too pretty and it's not working, so I think we have to go to another path.
"Maybe if the other three lines played a little like us it would be a little better. Same with us, if we played a little like them we'd have more goals too. We have to go back to the little things, put the puck on net and get bodies in."
The Avalanche has 15 goals in the past eight games and has been held to one goal in four of them. The power play is 0-for-22 in this stretch.
"We have to play maybe a little bit different," Roy said. "We're not going to have perfect goals all the time. It might have to be ugly goals at times with a screen in front or a tip, like the goal Bordeleau scored. Good forecheck, it hit his skate, bounced on the skate of the goalie and it's in the net. You don't have to be perfect. You have to be perfect in how hard you're going to work.
"Guys are working hard and that's the thing I said to them. I'm proud of them, regardless of what's going on right now. This group works hard, this group is focused. There's details that need to be better and we're going to work on them."
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The Avalanche hasn't been getting any offense from the defensemen, but Roy said they need to get more help from the forwards, who haven't been doing an effective job in front of opposing goalies.
"It's not more shots on net," he said. "We need more traffic in front when our 'D' take shots. It's not the number of shots we're going to get from the 'D.' We've been taking some shots. I thought Phoenix did a good job protecting the points. It was tough for us to bring the puck up and when we did we didn't have much traffic in front of the net. That's the thing we certainly want to work on."