After losing two straight games following a five-game winning streak, the Colorado Avalanche hope to regain their rhythm Saturday night in the Music City.
Colorado is reeling from consecutive 5-2 defeats on home ice ahead of its road meeting with the Nashville Predators in the first of four regular-season matchups between the Central Division squads.
The Avalanche went 5-6-0 in October but closed the month with a pair of duds — identical three-goal setbacks against the Chicago Blackhawks and Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Lightning loss was particularly frustrating to Colorado coach Jared Bednar.
The Avs were down 3-0 less than six minutes into the game after Conor Geekie potted his second career goal against Kaapo Kahkonen, who was making his Colorado debut between the pipes.
Bednar said a handful of mistakes by some of his younger players, forced to play due to numerous injuries, hurt the club in the opening period.
“If you just look at the chances we gave up early in the game,” Bednar said. “It’s awareness mistakes like young players make in just not reading it quick enough and not getting quite in the right spot.
“I think if you take those … plays out of it, we defended hard and defended well against a really talented team that can be … super dangerous.”
Cale Makar (goal, assist) and Nathan MacKinnon (two assists) stretched their respective season-opening point streaks to 11 games but could not rally the Avalanche in a hard push in the third period.
Makar, who has four goals and 15 assists, joined Bobby Orr as the only two defensemen who started a season with point streaks of at least 11 games. Orr’s streak to start the 1973-74 campaign ended at 15 games.
Colorado and Nashville are among five of the eight Central teams with a losing record entering the season’s first full month.
Like their opponent Saturday, the Predators have also lost two straight.
Nashville dropped a 3-2 overtime decision at Tampa Bay before being rolled 5-1 at home on Thursday by Edmonton, which was without star center Connor McDavid.
Filip Forsberg provided the Predators’ lone tally Thursday with an unassisted power-play goal in the first period that evened the game at 1.
Nashville outhit the Oilers 30-20 and trailed in total shots by just two (29-27), but the club could never find the traction to beat 32-year-old journeyman goalie Calvin Pickard, who stopped 26 shots to win for the third time in four decisions this season.
Despite Forsberg’s tally, the contest seemed to get away from the home side as soon as former Predators forward Viktor Arvidsson netted one for Edmonton just 37 seconds in.
“First shift,” head coach Andrew Brunette said. “We weren’t ready to play. (It’s like) pounding a square peg in a round hole here, saying they’re a desperate team, and we have to match it. And (we) came out and didn’t match right from the start, and we chased the game again.”
Nashville had its four-game point streak (3-0-1) snapped and finished October 3-6-1.
Predators third-line left winger Juuso Parssinen played on Thursday for the first time since his season debut on Oct. 15. The team announced on Friday that center Mark Jankowski (upper body) is day-to-day.
–Field Level Media
