Patrick Roy has shaken up his lines ahead of tonight’s visit from the Montreal Canadiens.
The hope is more goals. Roy’s Avalanche have scored just 14 times in their last seven games.
From NHL.com:
... Roy is moving Matt Duchene, who had been playing right wing, back to his natural center position to skate with Mikhail Grigorenko and Jarome Iginla. Nathan MacKinnon will center Alex Tanguay and Jack Skille, and John Mitchell will center Cody McLeod and Andreas Martinsen. The line of Gabriel Landeskog, Carl Soderberg and Blake Comeau remains intact.
Colorado’s coming off a 4-1 loss in Buffalo on Sunday -- a game in which the Avs actually outshot the Sabres, 35-21, only to be thwarted 34 times by goalie Robin Lehner.
“We felt like that was our best game of the road trip, and that just goes to show you where this game is sometimes. You have your best effort and you feel you’re dominating, but you still lose 4-1,” Landeskog told the club’s website. “We got to make sure that we take that offensive game with us that we played in Buffalo, where we felt like we created a lot of scoring chances. It’s just a matter of putting the puck in the back of the net.”
Of note, the Avs have some winnable games coming up. They get the Canadiens tonight, then travel to Edmonton to play the Oilers on Saturday. The day after that, they take on the Canucks in Vancouver.
For now, they hold the second wild-card spot in the West. But Arizona and Minnesota are only four points back, and each have three games in hand.
