Hope. That's all Avalanche fans have been looking for. Injury after injury has crushed the souls of the fanbase early in the season, leaving some to wonder if the team is truly cursed.
First it was Jonathan Drouin, then Ross Colton, then Miles Wood. For a team already missing Valeri Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen, and Gabriel Landeskog, things looked bleak. On Tuesday, the return of Lehkonen gave fans the hope they had been looking for.
It also appeared to give the Avalanche a much-needed jolt of energy, helping them break their three-game losing streak with a 6-3 victory. That hope lasted about, oh, 90 minutes. Halfway through the second, Cale Makar exited a power play shift in significant pain, never to return that period.
He gave it the old college try in the third period, but lasted about 1.5 shifts before calling it a night. In typical Avalanche fashion, there wasn't much of an update after the game.
"(He) just said he tweaked something in the late in the second and wasn't able to continue," Jared Bednar said after the win. The defense, outside of a brief Devon Toews absence, has been relatively healthy to start the season. One guy you can't afford to lose is Makar, who has five more points than the second highest scoring defenseman in the league.
Heck, for a few days, Makar was leading the entire league in scoring. Colorado survived most of the final 30 minutes without their Norris Trophy winner, thanks in large part to sacrifices from everyone else on the ice. One guy wh.
