Lehkonen out weeks, Avs look to keep momentum going against Blues

Colorado is missing two key players in the division rematch against St. Louis on Saturday

The Colorado Avalanche will face off against division rival St. Louis Blues without Artturi Lehkonen and Andrew Cogliano on the ice.

Head coach Jared Bednar said Lehkonen will be out weeks and could not give a definitive timeline as the team is still collecting information on the extent of his injury. 

The 28-year-old Finnish forward fell head-first into the boards during the second period of the Avalanche/Kraken game on Thursday. He was taken to the hospital for precaution after the incident and Bednar said he suffered an upper-body injury.

Cogliano was also injured in that game after being hit from behind. He left for a brief time and returned to finish the game but will not play against the Blues. 

The key for the Avalanche is to keep the momentum going that they have played with the last couple games. 

"We're playing with more intensity — defensive habits are a lot better," Mikko Rantanen said Saturday morning. "Obviously there's still couple mistakes (that) happen ... as long as we can limit those down and play like we did last two games on the defensive side — hard on pucks and physical — we're going to have good chance to be successful here."

The team doesn't believe it played poorly in the 4-3 loss to Seattle, which is why that elevated energy is important to keep going — especially at home. 

"We played hard, we made some mistakes and the mistakes we got to clean up. I thought they deserved the better outcome than they got," Bednar said. "I don't want it to affect their mood the way they're going to go and operate tonight — whether that was a win or loss we got to be prepared and ready to go and play hard, and play passionate hockey and be ready to execute on both sides of the puck tonight."

St. Louis returns to Ball Arena just 10 days after the first divisional matchup between the teams having won three of its last four games. The Avalanche are 1-2 since beating the Blues 4-1 on Nov. 1. 

Forward Riley Tufte and defenseman Caleb Jones were recalled from the Colorado Eagles and are on the roster for Saturday night's game. 

Jonathan Drouin — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Riley Tufte — Ryan Johansen — Valeri Nichushkin
Miles Wood — Ross Colton — Logan O’Connor
Kurtis MacDermid — Fredrik Olofsson — Tomas Tatar

Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Bowen Byram — Samuel Girard
Jack Johnson — Josh Manson

Alexandar Georgiev
Ivan Prosvetov