After losing two straight following a five-game winning streak, the Colorado Avalanche hope to find their rhythm again Saturday night in Music City.
Colorado is reeling from a 5-2 home losing streak ahead of its road meeting with the Nashville Predators in the first of four regular season contests between the Central Division teams.
The Avalanche went 5-6-0 in October but closed the month with duds — three-goal setbacks against the Chicago Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning.
The loss to the Lightning upset Colorado coach Jared Bednar.
The Avs went down 3-0 less than six minutes into the game after Conor Geekie scored his second goal with Kaapo Kahkonen, who was making his Colorado debut, between the pipes.
Bednar said a number of mistakes by some of his younger players, who were forced to play due to multiple injuries, hurt the club during the opening period.
If you just look at the chances we gave up at the beginning of the game,” said Bednar. “They are mistakes to raise awareness of young players for not learning fast enough and not getting to the right place.
“I think if you take those … that they played in, we defended hard and defended well against a really talented team that could be … very dangerous.”
Cale Makar (goal, assist) and Nathan MacKinnon (two assists) extended their season-opening hitting streak to 11 games but couldn’t rally the Avalanche with a heavy third-period push.
Makar, who has four goals and 15 assists, joined Bobby Orr as the only two defensemen to start the season with points in at least 11 games. Orr’s hitting streak to start the 1973-74 campaign ended at 15 games.
Colorado and Nashville are among five of the eight Central teams with a losing record entering the first full month of the season.
Like their opponent on Saturday, the Predators have also lost two in a row.
Nashville dropped a 3-2 overtime decision to Tampa Bay before getting swept 5-1 at home Thursday by Edmonton, which was without star Connor McDavid.
Filip Forsberg gave the Predators a one-point lead on Thursday with a powerful unassisted goal in the first half that tied the game at 1.
Nashville outshot the Oilers 30-20 and trailed by just two shots (29-27), but the club couldn’t find the momentum behind 32-year-old traveling goaltender Calvin Pickard, who stopped 26 shots to win the third. time in four decisions this season.
Despite Forsberg’s tally, the contest seemed to leave the team shortly after former Predators player Viktor Arvidsson scored Edmonton’s one just 37 seconds into the game.
“First shift,” head coach Andrew Brunette said. “We weren’t ready to play. (It’s like) we’re putting a peg in a round hole here, saying they’re a desperate team, and we’ve got to match it. And (we) came out and didn’t come together well from the start, and we chased the game again.”
Nashville came up with four points (3-0-1) and finished October 3-6-1.
Predators third-string left tackle Juuso Parssinen played Thursday for the first time since his season debut on Oct. 15. The team announced Friday that center Mark Jankowski (upper body) is day-to-day.
–Field Level Media
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