Colorado Avalanche at Edmonton Oilers, Game 50 Breakdown

Colorado Avalanche
@ Edmonton Oilers

Tuesday, Jan 31, 2012, 7:30 PM MST
Rexall Place

Mile High Hockey

Tickets

The importance of a guy like Jay McClement - Jibblescribbits
Jay McClement makes the avs a better team. He is so solid in his own zone (along with Daniel Winnik) that it allows the Avs to move Ryan O'Reilly up to the second line, and this season (as opposed to seasons past) he is finally getting to start shifts in the offensive zone. It's no wonder his point totals are rising.

How the Avalanche Can Win the West (Or at Least Make the Playoffs) - Mile High Hockey
So, what's working and what needs fixing? Well, let's take a look at how the Avalanche compare against the 14 other Western Conference teams. Colorado is 11th in the conference in scoring, averaging 2.43 goals a game. And they are 13th in goals allowed (2.82). And if that doesn't put you in a happy place, consider that the Avs have allowed 20 more goals than they have scored; only one Western Conference team - Columbus - has a worse goal differential. Okay, the Avs have an anemic offense and some inconsistent goaltending. Not news.

Will The Avalanche Be Buyers, Sellers, or Idle At The NHL Trade Deadline? - Mile High Hockey
If you go back and look at the rosters of our team from the first season until the lockout, you could literally fill half of an All-Star team roster with the players in Burgundy and Blue. They all couldn't play forever no matter how much we wished they could. I really feel the team actually started it's decline following 2002-03, Patrick Roy's last season with the Avs. All of those years with trading away draft picks was going to come back and haunt us. It wasn't entirely known, at the time, to what extent though.

Avalanche at Oilers, Game 52 Preview - Mile High Hockey
The Avalanche currently sit in 9th place and just 3 points separate 5 teams between 8th and 12th. All 5 of those teams are in action tonight, none against each other; this means the Avs could be anywhere between 8th and 12th when the dust settles tonight. With that in mind, I feel comfortable declaring tonight's game a Must-Win game. Please update your calendars accordingly.

Phil Cornet - Sam Gagner - Jordan Eberle
Taylor Hall - Shawn Horcoff - Ales Hemsky
Ryan Smyth - Eric Belanger - Ryan Jones
Ben Eager - Anton Lander - Lennart Petrell

Ladislav Smid - Tom Gilbert
Andy Sutton - Corey Potter
Ryan Whitney - Jeff Petry

The Cult of Stu - mc79hockey.com
Outside of this, it seems to me that a lot of the case in support of MacGregor is the idea that the Oilers have a bunch of awesome prospects coming. While this might be the case, I’m not sure why the default is that the drafting is going to be awesome.

Cult of Stu II - mc79hockey.com
So, basically, a new approach means that we throw out all of what history tells us. I should point out that Stauffer makes a point that I agree with – you throw ice time at your kids. He was, in effect, a bit critical of the idea of letting genuine NHL prospects play behind guys like Ryan Keller and I couldn’t agree more. Of course, you might have more losses then and you wouldn’t have the famed winning atmosphere. I’ll take TOI over winning atmosphere for developing hockey players any day.

G50 Avalanche at Oilers - Lowetide.ca
Oilers are at home where they play fairly well (12-8-3) for a basement team but they are playing Colorado and that’s a problem. The Avs are a good team (holy hell what a future) but the Oilers only play well against the truly good times like Vancouver or San Jose. I kid, but only a little.

Today's Frustrated Edmonton Fan: Phoenix9917

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