'I'm confident that we'll be better tonight': Avalanche move on from Stars loss
Colorado flipped the page from its loss to Dallas to get prepared for the matchup against the Minnesota Wild.
'I'm confident that we'll be better tonight': Avalanche move on from Stars lossHead coach Jared Bednar said fatigue was one of the factors in the 7-4 loss to the Dallas Stars — both physical and mental.
"I think it was maybe a little bit of both. Obviously we had some tough travel there and some late nights, but at the end of the day you can't be making excuses like that at this time of year," Sean Walker said after morning practice. "We just got to reset a little bit, get back to our game, and hopefully things will work out for us."
The Avalanche coach said his team had the energy to play hard but some players were dealing with a mental fatigue which affected their focus and contributed to the "absurd" things that happened in the game.
"Mustering up enough energy and concentrating on working doesn't always lead to like a perfect game on the mental side of it. Some of the mistakes we made were just like absurd and I wanted the guys to see that," Bednar said. "It's mistakes that we don't normally make. So it's lack of focus — I know our guys prepare the right way all the time, but it's either just a lack of focus or being mentally tired or trying to grind through it on the physical aspect, so obviously it's disappointing but we've had now another day to rest and kind of digest that game and look at it and try to get ourselves back on track. So I'm confident that we'll be better tonight."
The team's energy was high at morning skate and there were a lot of smiles on and off the ice. Forward Logan O'Connor made an appearance on the bench which seemed to brighten the rink.
Nathan MacKinnon is two goals away from hitting his first 50-goal season and Jonathan Drouin has tied his career-high season in points. Both players could achieve notable milestones in Tuesday night's game.
This is the last and final matchup between the Central Division rivals with the Avalanche up in the series 3-0: 3-2 on Nov. 24 at Minnesota, 2-1 OT on March 8 at Ball Arena and 5-2 on April 5 at Minnesota.
Projected lineup
Forwards Mikko Rantanen (concussion protocol) and Miles Wood (lower-body injury) remain out of tonight's lineup.
Jonathan Drouin — Nathan MacKinnon — Artturi Lehkonen
Zach Parise — Casey Mittelstadt — Valeri Nichushkin
Yakov Trenin — Ross Colton — Brandon Duhaime
Andrew Cogliano — Chris Wagner — Joel Kiviranta
Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Josh Manson
Jack Johnson — Sean Walker
Alexandar Georgiev
Justus Annunen
As an ESPN nationally televised game, the puck is scheduled to drop at 7:45 p.m.