Avalanche Welcomes Fans Back to Ball Arena

The Colorado Avalanche will now truly have a home-ice advantage as the team will play in front of a crowd at Ball Arena for the first time this season.
The Avalanche has invited frontline staff, health care providers, first responders, players' families and employees of Kroenke Sports and Entertainment to its game this evening against the Arizona Coyotes before it welcomes ticketed fans beginning on Friday.

"It's going to be nice to get people back into this building and get the energy up," said forward J.T. Compher. "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."
Colorado's home rink received a capacity variance from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment on March 18 that will allow the building to accommodate 4,050 fans, approximately 22 percent of the arena's capacity, but preparations to get the arena ready for fans have been going on for weeks. The NBA's Denver Nuggets hosted frontline workers during their game last night against the Philadelphia 76ers.
"I think we're pretty excited. It's a long time coming," said head coach Jared Bednar. "You see the reports that 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."
The last time the Avs played in front of a crowd at home was on March 11, 2020, the day before the NHL paused its 2020-21 campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Colorado gave its fans a memorable performance in that last outing as Compher scored in overtime and Cale Makar had three assists to reach the 50-point mark in the Avs' 3-2 win against the New York Rangers.
The team has skated in fan-less arenas pretty much ever since, with the only exception being four games at Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona, on Feb. 26-27 and March 22-23.
While there wasn't a ton of people in the building for those contests due to Arizona state and NHL restrictions, the Avs could still feel the energy of the crowd and the support from their own fans that made the trek to the desert.
"We had a lot of fans travel down there, there were lots of Avalanche sweaters in the stands, cheering us on, and that made a big difference," Bednar said of the contests in the Coyotes' home barn. "Even if it's only a few thousand people, it makes a difference. That's why the guys do it, they want to entertain and perform at a high level, and to be back in our building and have fans in the stands cheering us on is going to be great."
For the players, it will be nice for them to finally share the game with family as some wives, girlfriends, parents and children have never seen them skate in the Avs' home building. Defenseman Dan Renouf is one of those players as 13 of his 14 career NHL games have come this season with Colorado.
"I know our families are super pumped, and we are too," Renouf said. "I'm excited and hopefully not too long we'll have this building packed again."

LINEUP NOTES

Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said he isn't making any changes to his lineup, with goaltender Philipp Grubauer expected to make his fourth straight start in net.
Grubauer has 9-0-1 in his last 10 games and has 11 wins this month, a franchise record. He'll have the chance to tie the NHL mark for the most victories in a month, currently shared by Sergei Bobrovsky (December 2016), Jimmy Howard (March 2010), Ray Emery (March 2006) and Bernie Parent (March 1974).
Defenseman Bowen Byram will mis his third consecutive game with an upper-body injury, but he skated again on his own before the team's morning skate and could be available for one or both of the Avs' outings against the St. Louis Blues on Friday and Saturday in Denver.
"We'll probably know a little bit more tomorrow if he's going to be an option for us for the weekend games," Bednar said of Byram. "He is making progress."
In a roster move earlier in the day, the Avs reassigned defenseman Greg Pateryn from its taxi squad to the Colorado Eagles and recalled forward Liam O'Brien and Keaton Middleton after both players signed NHL deals with the team in the morning.

NOTEWORTHY

The Avs are on an 11-game point streak (9-0-2), the second-longest run in the NHL this season, and are 8-0-1 in their last nine games on home ice.
Colorado is 11-2-3 so far in March, tying the franchise record for wins in a single month (also February 2020, March 2007 and January 2004). The Avalanche's 25 points in March are tied with Pittsburgh for the most in the NHL, one shy of the franchise record for any month (26 points, 11-1-2-2, January 2004).
Cale Makar leads all defensemen this season in points per game (1.00) and his 0.91 career points-per-game average is the sixth-highest by a blueliner in NHL history behind only Bobby Orr (1.39), Harry Cameron (1.10), Paul Coffey (1.09), Denis Potvin (0.99) and Ray Bourque (0.98).
Gabriel Landeskog scored his 58th career power-play goal on Monday to pass Peter Forsberg (57) for seventh place in franchise history.
The Gabriel Landeskog-Nathan MacKinnon-Mikko Rantanen line has combined for 35 points (13 goals, 22 assists) and a plus-18 rating in the last seven contests and 45 points (18 goals, 27 assists) and a plus-27 rating in the last 10 outings.

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