The Avalanche will welcome fans to Ball Arena on Wednesday for the first time since March 11 of last year when they face the Arizona Coyotes in the fourth game of a six-game homestand.
Health care providers, frontline staff, first responders, players' families and employees of Kroenke Sports and Entertainment will be the first to attend.
Here are the
GAME NOTES.
Approval was granted from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.
Ticketed fans, limited to 4,050, will be allowed to attend starting Friday when the St. Louis Blues come to town.
“We’re pretty excited, long time coming,” coach
Jared Bednar said after the morning skate. “From the reports I saw on the news and on social media last night with fans back at the Nuggets game, I know it was exciting, the team fed off of it, and we’re looking forward to that.
“We’ve played some road games, Arizona especially, (where) we had lots of our fans travel down there; there were lots of (fans wearing) Avalanche sweaters in the stands cheering us on and it made a big difference even if it was only a few thousand people.
“That’s why the guys do it, they want to entertain and perform at a high level. To be able to be back in our building and have fans in the stands cheering us on will be great.”
They’ll watch an Avalanche team that has gone 9-0-2 in the past 11 games.
“It's going to be nice to get people back into this building and get the energy up,"
J.T. Compher said. "We love having Avs fans here, they make the game more fun, they give us energy. We think it's only going to help us, and it's going to be exciting."
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Bowen Byram skated for the second day in a row and is making progress, but he will miss his third straight game.
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The Avalanche announced they have signed forward
Alex Newhook to a three-year, entry-level contract. He will report to the Colorado Eagles.
Newhook, 20, was a first-round pick (No. 16) in the 2019 NHL draft and just completed his sophomore season at Boston College, where he had 16 points (seven goals, nine assists) in 12 games. He missed the first half of the season due to quarantine protocols before the 2021 IIHF World Junior Championship tournament in Edmonton, where he had six points (three goals, three assists) for silver medal-winning Team Canada.
Newhook, who is 5-foot-11 and 195 pounds, won the Tim Taylor Award as the NCAA Division I Rookie of the Year as a freshman when he had 42 points (19 goals, 23 assists) in 34 games.
"I think I'm ready to make the jump to professional hockey," he said. "I think I've had two great years at Boston College. I really enjoyed my time here, but I think it's the right time for me to move on. A few of the guys on our team have made similar decisions and I'm really happy to be taking this step now. It was definitely a hard decision, but I think it was the right one."
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The Avalanche also signed defenseman
Keaton Middleton to a two-year contract and forward
Liam O’Brien to a one-year deal.
Middleton, 23, has one assist in 14 games for the Eagles. He has 27 points (10 goals, 17 assists) in 116 career AHL games with the Eagles and the San Jose Barracuda.
O’Brien, 26, has eight points (four goals, four assists) in 12 games with the Eagles. He has 17 games of NHL experience, posting a goal and an assist with the Washington Capitals.
The lineup:
FORWARDS
Gabriel Landeskog -- Nathan MacKinnon -- Mikko Rantanen
Brandon Saad -- Nazem Kadri -- Andre Burakovsky
Valeri Nichushkin – Tyson Jost -- Joonas Donskoi
J.T. Compher -- Pierre-Edouard Bellemare -- Logan O’Connor
DEFENSE
Devon Toews – Samuel Girard
Ryan Graves -- Cale Makar
Dan Renouf -- Jacob MacDonald
GOALIES
Philipp Grubauer
Jonas Johansson
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