NHL Picks: The struggling Colorado Avalanche host the Vancouver Canucks on Friday night. The Avalanche were a nice surprise a year ago under new coach Patrick Roy but this season they have started very slowly due to poor offseason management and injuries. It may not get any better on Friday against a good Canucks team. Let’s look at the matchup and the rest of Friday’s NHL schedule.
Vancouver at Colorado
The Avalanche have been hurt by injuries, especially to the one to starting goaltender Semyon Varlamov. He carried the team last year and they have struggled without him. He should be back soon but may not be ready for this game on Friday. And the team has nothing behind Varlamov in goal.
The primary backup, Reto Berra is also hurt, plus he isn’t any good anyway and the team has no one who is going to come in and save them in goal. They are going to continue to struggle until Varlamov is fully healthy. If Colorado was a good offensive team then perhaps they could win some high scoring games but they are not. A lot of things went right for the Av’s last season which is why they were a huge surprise. This season a lot has gone wrong and the team did nothing in the off-season to address their personnel losses.
NHL Predictions
The Canucks have done really well in this series of late, winning 7 of the last 10. They have also won four of the last six in Denver. We’ll look for Vancouver to win this game on Friday night.
More Friday NHL Predictions
- Columbus at Anaheim: This is a tough spot for Columbus as they were in San Jose on Thursday. We’ll look for the Ducks to win this one at home.
- Dallas at New Jersey: The Stars are scoring a lot of goals this season and the Devils are no longer a team that can’t score. We’ll go over the total in this one.
- Tampa Bay at Winnipeg: The Lighting have done really well in this series of late so we’ll look for the road team to win this contest.
- Carolina at Edmonton: The Hurricanes are really struggling and even though the Oilers are nothing special they should win this game at home.
