Nicolas Roy, Zachary L'Heureux could miss Avs road trip
TLDR: Jared Bednar says Nicolas Roy and Zachary L'Heureux are day-to-day but could turn week-to-week, so the Avalanche forwards are out vs. Pittsburgh and may miss the 2-game road trip.
Bednar gave the update before Friday's game against the Penguins, and the important part was the hedge at the end of it.
Both L’Heureux and Roy are day to day, but Bednar said that could turn into week to week. They’re out tonight and “maybe for the next couple games.”
Day-to-day is how coaches describe a guy who might be back tomorrow. When it comes with "could turn into week-to-week," nobody actually knows. Roy was already a late scratch Wednesday against Dallas, so Friday is his second straight game out. The Avs lost that one 3-2 in a shootout and sit at 4-2-1. After the Penguins, Colorado heads east for Philadelphia on Monday and New Jersey on Tuesday, and Bednar's "maybe for the next couple games" covers exactly that trip.
Losing 2 bottom-6 bodies at once means the depth chart gets thin in a hurry, and the Avs are already short a third forward. Logan O'Connor was on the ice for morning skate, but he can't play yet either.
Logan O’Connor is on the ice this morning for the #Avs. He’s on LTIR and can’t return until after the upcoming two-game road trip. Jaden Schwartz is in a PP1 jersey, while Martin Necas is in a PP2 sweater.
O'Connor's situation is the hardest one on the list. He was reportedly close to returning from a lower-body injury last week when his father, former NHLer Myles O'Connor, died suddenly, and he stepped away from the team. Colorado moved him to long-term injured reserve, which requires a player to miss at least 10 games and 24 days. That raised an obvious question about how he could be back this soon, and Rawal's best guess was that the move was backdated.
Since everyone is asking, I am assuming the Avalanche backdated this to the start of the regular season.
That's an assumption, not something the team confirmed, but it lines up with Masisak's timeline of O'Connor returning after the road trip. Either way, the LTIR move clears cap room on a roster that needed it.
The other storyline from morning skate is the power play. Jaden Schwartz is staying on the top unit with Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon and Nazem Kadri, and Martin Necas drops to PP2. Benching your most dynamic winger on the man advantage is a real statement, especially with the Avs' only power-play chance against Dallas ending in a shorthanded goal for the Stars. Masisak also noticed something odd about how the second unit lines up.
Avs PP alignments: Makar, MacKinnon-Kadri-Schwartz, Hughes Toews, Nelson-Lehkonen-Necas, Landeskog The guys on the PP2 wings are not on their one-timer side, which is interesting.
Putting wingers on their off side for one-timers looks like an experiment, and it'll either look smart by the end of the night or get scrapped by Monday. Mackenzie Blackwood starts in net against the Penguins. Keep an eye on the morning skate in Philly: if Roy or L'Heureux shows up in a regular jersey there, it really was day-to-day. If neither one gets on the plane, it's week-to-week.
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