The bad news: star Avalanche center
Nathan MacKinnon is expected to miss 1-2 weeks with a lower-body injury.
The good news: stud rookie defenseman
Cale Makar will play Wednesday against the New York Rangers at the Pepsi Center after missing five games with an upper-body injury.
GAME NOTES
MacKinnon, the NHL’s fifth-leading scorer with 93 points (35 goals, 58 assists) in 69 games, was injured in the second period Monday in the Avalanche’s 3-1 loss in Los Angeles.
"Every team is going through a certain amount of injuries," coach
Jared Bednar said after the morning skate. "I think you can always count on having one or two, and you're hoping to be healthy. Just the number of guys that we have out, the guys who play key roles for us, it's getting to be a lot, but hopefully we've got some reinforcements coming soon. We'll definitely see guys (return) on this homestand."
The first of those will be Makar, who hasn’t played since Feb. 29 at Nashville.
“I'm super excited to be back," he said. “Obviously you don't want to miss games at this point in the season. I'm just excited to just get out there and hopefully play a good one tonight."
Makar is second in the league in scoring among rookies with 47 points (12 goals, 35 assists).
Forwards
Andre Burakovsky, (upper body),
Matt Calvert (lower body),
Nazem Kadri (lower body),
Mikko Rantanen (upper body) and
Colin Wilson (lower body) also remain out, along with goalie
Philipp Grubauer (lower body).
Rantanen, Burakovsky, Kadri and Calvert took part in the morning skate while wearing no-contact jerseys, and Grubauer faced some shots before the skate, but Bednar didn’t offer updates on their status.
"It’s been tough with all the injuries, but like we’ve talked about over the last few weeks, it’s been next guy up,” said
J.T. Compher, who will center the top line. “So many different guys are stepping up and finding a way over the last month or so to get results. We just have to keep playing the right way and playing together."
The projected lineup:
FORWARDS
Gabriel Landeskog -- J.T. Compher -- Vladislav Namestnikov
Valeri Nichushkin -- Tyson Jost -- Joonas Donskoi
Matt Nieto -- Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Martin Kaut
Logan O’Connor -- Vladislav Kamenev
DEFENSE
Ryan Graves -- Cale Makar
Samuel Girard -- Erik Johnson
Ian Cole -- Nikita Zadorov
Mark Barberio
GOALIES
Pavel Francouz
Michael Hutchinson
Colorado Avalanche Blogger •Avalanche Insider • 
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