Preview: Trent Miner and the avalanche breeze into The Windy City

The Avalanche start a back-to-back situation with the Chicago Blackhawks tonight at the United Center in Chicago, IL. The Avalanche are climbing the standings as they pile up the points, having secured at least one in their last eight contests. It’s the year of the debut as Trent Miner gets the start tonight against Central’s least successful group.

Colorado avalanche

The avalanche of injuries continues as we add Jo Drouin to the list of players on the mend. It feels like Drouin plays for about a week and a half and shuts it down again. It feels like he rushes back repeatedly and aggravates the same upper body injury, but that’s just speculation. I’m still unsure if Val Nichushkin will be put back in the lineup for Colorado despite attending practice in a normal sweater. His injury quickly went from minor/day-to-day to minor/week-to-week. Ivan Ivan was still in the red at practice and Jared Bednar mentioned that the Avalanche would likely go from 11-7 tonight. That makes Nichushkin’s return highly unlikely.

As for the guys who will lace them up, Mikko has officially tied his career point streak with points in 14 consecutive games. Now it’s about extending it for an elite forward who is making himself more and more expensive every day. No one asked, but I think the Avalanche should ditch it too before he blows up in the playoffs.

I wrote about Devon Toews in our Roundtable New Year’s Resolutions and he has followed through on my request. The Avalanche lead the league in scoring from defensemen, but had relied primarily on Cale Makar’s blistering scoring ability before the calendar turned to 2025. Since then, Devon Toews has seven points (4G/3A) in just four contests. Can he add it tonight?

Expected lineup:

Artturi Lehkonen — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Ross Colton — Casey Mittelstadt — Ye Innala
Joel Kiviranta — Parker Kelly — Logan O’Connor
Tye Felhaber — Juuso Parssinen — Calvin de Haan

Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Josh Manson
Keaton Middleton — Sam Malinski

Chicago Blackhawks

The Blackhawks lead the season series against the Avalanche after winning 5-2 back in October 2024, but things should be a little different tonight. In their previous matchup, the Avalanche went with Justus Annunen, who gave up three goals in the first period on not many shots on goal. Well, that might not be true as Trent Miner got his first career start. Hopefully the Avalanche can limit Chicago’s chances and help out a rookie! The Hawks lost to the struggling New York Rangers by a score of 6-2 on Sunday. Chicago has lost six of its last seven games, all in regulation.

Expected lineup:

Tyler Bertuzzi — Connor Bedard — Ilya Mikheyev
Taylor Hall — Jason Dickinson — Nick Foligno
Colton Dach — Frank Nazar — Teuvo Teravainen
Craig Smith — Lukas Reichel — Ryan Donato

Wyatt Kaiser — Seth Jones
Alex Vlasic — Louis Crevier
Nolan Allan — TJ Brodie

Goalkeepers

It will be Trent Miner in his NHL debut against Petr Mrazek tonight! If you’re looking for pregame coverage, we’ve got you covered Mile High Hockey Lab! We’ll go live at 2:30 PM MT on YouTube, Ryk & X!