Avs Learning Lessons on First Road Trip

The Colorado Avalanche is 1-3-0 through the first four games of the 2021-22 season and is working on developing team chemistry while on its first road swing of the year.
"Just as when you have a good start you want to keep it going and you want to keep building, but in the back of your mind you know there's a lot of hockey left. So, for us it's just a matter of finding a way to win one hockey game," said captain Gabriel Landeskog after Thursday's game. "You're not supposed to lose three straight games, right? Good teams find a way to just keep it at just one or two, but you know it's a good lesson for us early on in the season and we'll get out of it. I'm not worried at all, it's just a matter of trying to stop the bleeding right off the bat here."
The Avalanche is facing a tough task, wrapping up its three-game road trip on Saturday against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning. The Avs are 0-2-0 so far on this trip, falling 6-3 at the Washington Capitals on Tuesday and 4-1 at the Florida Panthers on Thursday.

Colorado had a stronger performance on Thursday than it did on Tuesday but couldn't capitalize on its chances in the outing.
"It's a long year, I'd feel a lot better about it if we were 2-2 and we won that one," head coach Jared Bednar said after the loss to the Panthers. "After some of the stuff that we've gone through, we find ourselves 1-3--probably right where we should be at based on the way we played. So, we have work to do, and guys aren't scared to put in the work. Like I said, there was a lot better purpose to our game [in Florida]. There was a lot of things to like, it's just our checking is going to have to get a little bit better and continue to sort of drive up the urgency and intensity in our checking.
"A lot of it was really good, it's a dangerous team over there. I don't know what the scoring chances ended up, I have to go back through it and look at it, but I did look at some of the things that we created in the second, you got to find a way to capitalize on one or two and generally we do."

Colorado was back at it on Friday morning, practicing for 45 minutes at Ice Sports Forum in Tampa. The Avs are visiting the Lightning for the first time since Oct. 19, 2019, when they picked up a 6-2 victory at Amalie Arena.
"I mean we got 78 games left, right? It's a lot of hockey, start with one and obviously playing another tough opponent here in a couple of days," said Landeskog. "There's no secret formula, right? Like we got to work and that's what we're doing and that's what we're trying to do. We're just not very connected group at times, which is something we got to get better at and, you know, we got to fix it obviously and it's good chance to do it here on Saturday."
The puck is set to drop between the Avalanche and Lightning at 5 p.m. MT on Saturday.

LINE COMBINATIONS AT FRIDAY'S PRACTICE

92 Gabriel Landeskog - 29 Nathan MacKinnon - 96 Mikko Rantanen
37 J.T. Compher - 91 Nazem Kadri - 61 Martin Kaut
43 Darren Helm - 12 Jayson Megna - 95 Andre Burakovsky
75 Sampo Ranta - 11 Mikhail Maltsev - 25 Logan O'Connor
4 Bowen Byram - 8 Cale Makar
49 Samuel Girard - 6 Erik Johnson
3 Jack Johnson - 28 Ryan Murray
7 Devon Toews* - 56 Kurtis MacDermid
35 Darcy Kuemper
31 Jonas Johansson
\-denotes non-contact participant*
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