Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Avalanche Playoff Hopes Under Fire

The Colorado Avalanche have been the surprise of the NHL for most of this season.

Joe Sacco, Chris Stewart, Marek Svatos

Colorado Avalanche head coach Joe Sacco, back, directs his team while right winger Chris Stewart, front left, and right winger Marek Svatos, of Slovakia, look on against the Carolina Hurricanes in the third period of the Avalanche’s 5-4 victory in an NHL hockey game in Denver on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

AP

With a young roster, a first-year head coach and a goaltender getting his first crack at being a full-time starter there weren’t a lot of reasons to be hopeful for the Avs this season.

Of course this is why they play the games and the Avalanche have taken full advantage of coach Joe Sacco’s tutelage and connection with the young players and run wild for the better part of this season, even leading the Northwest Division for a spell.

Now with the season winding down, the Avs are possibly wearing out and find themselves in eighth place in the Western Conference just two points ahead of the Calgary Flames and headed for a showdown in Denver on Friday night. The month of March has not been kind to the Avs as they’ve lost six of their last seven and gave up a point to the Kings (who are currently seventh) in their one win during that stretch.

Via twitter, Avalanche beat writer Adrian Dater reported the team went in for a closed-door meeting following their 5-2 loss to Anaheim. For a team in that kind of slide and finding themselves in the position they are now, it’s probably for the best.

The upside for Colorado is that Calgary will come into their game on Friday playing roller coaster hockey themselves. The Flames have won two straight (against Washington and Phoenix), but lost two straight before that (against the Islanders and Bruins). If you can make heads or tails of that, I’ll give you $50 in Monopoly money. I don’t want to blow Friday’s game out of proportion with hyperbole, but as WWE’s Jim Ross would say. it should be a real slobber-knocker.