Game 39: Winnipeg Jets vs Colorado Avalanche pre-game report

The Jets defeated the Preds last night 3-0 in Winnipeg and immediately left for Denver as they’ll take on the Avalanche in a huge clash of Central Division titans to close out 2024.

We learned after the game that Winnipeg will be without Mason Appleton who sustained a lower-body injury a couple of games back, tried to play through it and is now listed as “week-to-week” joining defenceman Haydn Fleury with that unwanted designation. As a result the team recalled Moose captain Dominic Toninato up from the farm to provide them with an extra forward.

About the only thing we know from head coach Scott Arniel, which he unofficially confirmed, is that you can expect Eric Comrie in the net. We will have to wait and see if he chooses to get either the aforementioned Toninato (unlikely) or Ville Heinola (possibly) into the lineup.

They face a tough test in an Avalanche team that has won four straight games and are 8-2-0 in their last ten games. They recently solidified their goaltending position by trading for Mackenzie Blackwood from the Sharks and signing him to a five-year contract extension. He’s 4-1-0 with his new club boasting a 1.82 GAA and a .940 save %. Now that they’ve solidified their netminder their goal differential is back on the positive end of the ledger as they previously both scored a lot but also gave up a lot. About the only thing that sticks out is they don’t have a great home record (9-8-0) vs road (13-7-0). They sit 11 points back of the Jets.

Skate news:

No morning skate.

Warm-up news:

No changes for the Jets as per radio analyst Mitchell Clinton.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Perfetti-Namestnikov-Ehlers
Niederreiter-Lowry-Iafallo
Barron-Kupari-Gustafsson

Morrissey-DeMelo
Stanley-Pionk
Miller-Coghlan

Comrie
Hellebuyck

Avalanche projected lines & D pairs:

Lehkonen-MacKinnon-Nichushkin
Drouin-Colton-Rantanen
Kiviranta-Kelly-O’Connor
Innala-Mittelstadt-Parssinen

Toews – Makar
Girard – Manson
Middleton – Malinski

Blackwood in net.

Via (lines/goalie) Corey Masisak of the Denver Post. D pairs from Daily Faceoff.

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 7 PM CST. Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action. You can join us on our YouTube channel for the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show around 9:40 PM CST as we discuss and analyze the results of the game.