The Vancouver Canucks hope to avoid a season-high fourth
loss in a row tonight in a Northwest Division battle with the Colorado
Avalanche at Pepsi Center.
Vancouver is on its second three-game slide of the season, having also opened
up the year with a trio of setbacks in a row. The Canucks have been outscored
11-3 over their current skid, including Thursday's 3-1 setback in Detroit.
Mason Raymond scored for the Canucks, while Roberto Luongo stopped 26 shots.
Luongo was making his first start since October 27 due to a hairline rib
fracture, though he did appear in relief in Tuesday's loss to the Blues.
"I think we played a lot better than the score showed out there. I think we
did a lot of good things that we talked about yesterday at practice, the
unfortunate thing is that we ran into bit of a hot goalie and made a few
costly mistakes," Raymond said.
Vancouver ends a five-game road trip tonight and is 3-8-0 as the guest this
year. The Canucks haven't dropped four in a row since an eight-game skid from
January 9-31 of last season.
Colorado returns home after a 3-2 shootout loss to Chicago on Wednesday. Craig
Anderson made 37 saves against his former club, but was beaten in the third
round of the shootout by Patrick Sharp to take the loss.
Kyle Cumiskey and Wojtek Wolski scored for the Avalanche, who have lost two in
a row and four of six but are 6-1-0 at home this year.
Colorado activated forward Darcy Tucker from injured reserve before the game,
but placed John-Michael Liles on IR due to a shoulder injury. Also, Milan
Hejduk has missed the last two games due to a back injury, while Tom Preissing
has yet to make his season debut because of knee surgery.
Both Hejduk and Preissing are questionable for tonight.
Colorado notched a 3-0 victory at home over Vancouver on October 3, but the
Canucks repaid the favor with a 3-0 home win of its own over the Avs on
November 1.
The Canucks have won four of the last six meetings overall, but have lost five
of their last seven at Colorado.
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