Avalanche players weren’t ready to freak out Saturday before their home opener against the Minnesota Wild. It was only Game 2 of 82. There are seven more months of hockey to play. It’s too early to be pulling out hair.
But after a 5-0, season-opening loss to the Wild in Minnesota on Thursday, the Avs were sweating.
So coach Patrick Roy, for the second consecutive day, shuffled his lineup. Friday, when he first switched his skaters, the Avalanche didn’t even practice. Counting moves Saturday, Roy twice tried to solve a problem before it surfaced again.
“Looking at our guys yesterday, they were not happy with our performance. And we talked about it,” Roy said Saturday morning at the Pepsi Center after the team’s pregame skate.
So the Avs took on a new flair in their rematch with the Wild.
Dennis Everberg, a 22-year-old Swede who signed as a free- agent forward in April and is playing in his first NHL season, was promoted to the Avalanche’s top line. His high-energy debut was one of Colorado’s few bright spots Thursday.
Everberg was paired to start Saturday’s game with team captain Gabe Landeskog and center Ryan O’Reilly.
“We’re going to try to get three duos,” Roy said, adding that he wants to create sharpshooting tandems to spread out the Avalanche’s best players.
In this case, that meant Landeskog was paired with O’Reilly, Matt Duchene skated with Jarome Iginla on the second line and Alex Tanguay went with Nathan MacKinnon.
“We try to address everything we have to do,” Roy said. “Then we can come to the rink really focused on the game and not on different details of the game. We’d rather for them to come and just play the game and focus on what they have to do.”
Iginla, a 37-year-old forward who signed with the Avalanche in July, spoke with the calmness that comes with playing 18 years in the NHL. But there was urgency in his message too.
“We have to bring our compete level up. It’s the regular season now,” Iginla said. “We were outcompeted in the first game. Minny was really good. And we were the opposite of that.” Footnotes. Cody McLeod, a left wing, was moved to Colorado’s fourth line Saturday to play with center Marc-Andre Cliche and right wing Max Talbot. … The Avs entered Saturday’s game with a strong record in home openers. They were 24-6-4 all time, including 12-3-3 since moving to Denver.
