The Avalanche didn’t practice Thursday, but Colorado coach Joe Sacco appeared on an afternoon NHL media conference call and said he didn’t have an update on winger Peter Mueller, who missed the past two games with a concussion.
Sacco said he still considered Mueller to be out “indefinitely,” and declined to speculate on when he might be back in the lineup.
Mueller was injured in the third period of the Sunday overtime victory over San Jose when Sharks defenseman Rob Blake shoved him into the boards. Mueller didn’t make the trip with the team for Tuesday’s shootout win at Vancouver and Wednesday’s overtime loss at Edmonton.
“There’s no timetable on his return,” Sacco said.
The Avalanche will close out the regular season with home games against the Chicago Blackhawks tonight and the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday afternoon.
The most likely possibility is that the Avalanche will remain eighth and face the West’s No. 1 seed — either Chicago or San Jose — in the first round. If the Blackhawks win tonight at Denver, it would make a Colorado-Chicago matchup in the first round more likely.
On the conference call, Sacco was asked about facing the Sharks or Blackhawks.
“They’re two of the top teams not only in the conference, a very strong conference, but in the National Hockey League as well,” Sacco said. “I think with San Jose, the challenge with that team is the size and strength of a (Joe) Thornton-(Patrick) Marleau-(Dany) Heatley line. We all know they’re skilled, but I think the problem they present is their size and their ability to really control the play down low in the offensive zone. They’re very hard to contain. They also have some pretty good depth. . . .
“If you look at the Blackhawks, if you look at them overall, it’s their team speed and depth up front, and then the same thing on the back end. When I look at the Blackhawks, I look at depth and I look at how much team speed they have.”
Considering the low expectations for the Avalanche this season, in the wake of a last-place finish in the West a year ago, it’s arguable that Colorado will have little pressure on it in the postseason — and proverbially is playing with “house money.”
But the other temptation would be to accept that just making the playoffs will be considered a major accomplishment.
“Hopefully, they don’t know any better,” Sacco said, laughing. “That’s kind of what happened at the start of the season. We got off to such a good start and we had such a long road trip. . . . We had a lot of success on the road in large part because of the fact that I don’t think our young guys knew that it was supposed to be hard, that it was supposed to be difficult. We just went out and we just played, and we had success.
“I’m hoping that we kind of regain that same kind of focus, that same feeling that we had at the start of the season. Just play our game and really not try to think too much, and just kind of let things happen.”
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
