Saad Out Week-to-Week as Handful of Avs Near Return

The Colorado Avalanche players in the league's COVID-19 protocol are making progress toward returning to game action, but the team will be without Brandon Saad for the next two-to-four weeks.
Saad, who has played in 44 of Colorado's 45 games this year, is out with a lower-body injury that he suffered on Saturday against the St. Louis Blues. In his first campaign with the Avalanche, the 28-year-old has 15 goals and nine assists and the only contest he missed previously was due to the birth of his and his wife's second child.
He had been skating on a line with Tyson Jost and Valeri Nichushkin, and that spot will be filled by Carl Soderberg this evening as the Avs take on the Blues for the fourth consecutive time at Enterprise Center. It is the first time Colorado/Quebec has ever played four straight road games against the same opponent.

The contest is also the eighth and final meeting between Avalanche and Blues this year. The Avs are 5-2-0 so far against St. Louis, their most wins ever against the division rival in a single season.
When the team's met on Saturday afternoon, the Blues picked up a 5-3 win and the loss was Colorado's 10th regulation defeat of the season (in 45 games). The Avs were the last NHL team with single-digit regulation losses.
"I thought that both teams played pretty hard last game. We had a good start, they finished the first period really well then I really liked our second period, and they came back on us in the third," said head coach Jared Bednar. "I think we need to be better with the puck, we turned the puck over too much on our breakouts and even in the neutral zone and handed them some scoring chances, and we got to be better with our discipline as well. We are taking penalties up ice 150, 180 feet away from our net for no reason. We have to use our legs to try and check the puck back and not reach in and grab guys and use our sticks. We've been a little bit undisciplined there, it's been creeping into our game here lately, and we got to make sure we are improving on that for tonight because their power play has been really good as of late."

The Avalanche currently has four players missing games due to COVID-related absences: forwards Joonas Donskoi and Mikko Rantanen, defenseman Bowen Byram and goaltender Philipp Grubauer.
Byram was removed from the league's protocol last week but is working on getting his conditioning back as he hasn't played since suffering an upper-body injury on March 25 against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Grubauer, who was put in COVID protocol on April 14 and removed from the list on Friday, is with the team in St. Louis and has been doing cardio and working out off the ice for the past three days. He can join the group on the ice on Tuesday.
Rantanen, who was in the protocol due to contact tracing, is in Denver skating while Donskoi is working out on his cardio and can get on the ice on Thursday. Prior to Colorado's four-game trip, Bednar noted that Rantanen could return to game action at some point on the journey, which concludes on Wednesday at the Golden Knights.
Additionally, defenseman Jacob MacDonald is week-to-week as he recovers from a lower-body injury that he suffered during at-home workouts while the team was paused from action from April 16-21.

A PAIR OF AVS STREAKING

Center Nathan MacKinnon has collected at least a point in 13 straight games while defenseman Cale Makar has found the scoresheet in five consecutive outings. MacKinnon's streak is one shy of his career high set from Feb. 24-March 22,2018 and matched during the 2020 playoffs (Aug. 2-Sept. 2, 2020) while Makar's run ties his career high (third time).
MacKinnon's streak is tied for the second-longest in the NHL this season, one shy of Dougie Hamilton's leading 14-game run. He also has a career-high eight-game assist streak (12 assists), which is also tied for the second-longest in 2020-21 (Ryan Strome leads with 10).
With a helper tonight, MacKinnon would be the first Avalanche player with a nine-game assist streak since John-Michael Liles in 2010-11. He has 37 points (13 goals, 24 assists) in his last 21 contests, tied with the New York Rangers' Artemi Panarin for the most since March 12.
Makar has helpers in all five contests of his current run, which also matches the longest assist streak of his career (Oct. 3-14, 2019).
In his last 10 outings, Makar has two goals and 11 assists, and his 13 points in April are tied for the second most in the league by a defenseman for the month.

LINEUP NOTES

Goaltender Jonas Johansson will make his fifth start of the season with Colorado, his first appearance since stopping 24-of-25 shots in a victory at the Anaheim Ducks on April 11.
Since the Avalanche acquired him from the Buffalo Sabres on March 20, he owns a 3-0-1 record, 1.72 goals-against average, .938 save percentage and one shutout in four starts with Colorado.
Kiefer Sherwood will enter the lineup on the fourth line with Liam O'Brien and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, his first game with the Avalanche since playing the Blues at home on April 2. Sherwood has skated in seven games with Colorado this year and has two assists and a plus-1 rating.
View: Avalanche at Blues Projected Lineup

NOTEABLES

The Avalanche has 999 regular-season wins since moving to Denver, one shy of 1,000. Colorado owns a 999-725-101-142 record since relocating. Only five teams have over 1,000 wins during that time span: Detroit (1059), Dallas (1022), Pittsburgh (1020), Washington (1010), St. Louis (1001).
With three more outings before the calendar flips to May, the Avalanche's eight victories and 16 points are already the franchise's most ever in April.
The Avs have scored the first goal of the game 32 times, the most of any team. Colorado is 26-4-2 when scoring first, the most wins in the NHL.
The Avalanche is 13-6-2 on the road this season, including 4-1-0 in its last five road games and 10-3-1 in its last 14.

INTERVIEWS