Tonight at 6:00 p.m. ET, the Colorado Avalanche (17-6-0, 34 points) and Minnesota Wild (15-7-4, 34 points) go head-to-head live from the Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota in the first of five meetings this season. The game can be live streamed here. Colorado fans can hear all of the action by adjusting their radios to KRWZ 950 while Minnesota fans can do the same on KFAN 100.3.
Colorado and Minnesota both enter play in a tight Central Division race and are tied with 34 points apiece.
Matt Duchene returned to the lineup Wednesday as a game-time decision after the Avalanche lost Paul Stastny due to back spasms. The Avalanche dropped the game 4-1 to the St. Louis Blues.
"When [Duchene] saw that Paul was not capable of playing he said, 'I'm going to go,'" coach Patrick Roy told the Avalanche's website. "Obviously, I would love to see Matt have a full practice before playing [Wednesday], but unfortunately things like this happen, and you have no choice then."
Duchene (12-8-20) and Stastny (8-9-17) are the top two scorers on the team while Ryan O'Reilly (9-7-16) is close behind in third.
The Wild fell to the Phoenix Coyotes on Wednesday 3-1 and are without top scorer Zach Parise (11-11-22) who has a foot injury.
"The first 10 games of the year, we were concerned with getting pucks deep and managing the puck and playing the right way and being a physical team," forward Matt Cooke told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "We didn't do that [Wednesday] until the second period."
With Parise sidelined, Mikko Koivu is the top scorer with five goals and 16 assists for 21 points while Jason Pominville has lit the lamp 13 times and added four assists for 17 points.
Josh Harding is 13-3-2 with a 1.48 goals-against average and a .939 with a save percentage for Minnesota this season while Semyon Varlamov is 12-6-0 with a 2.14 GAA and a .932 save percentage for Colorado.
The Avalanche and Wild will both look for two huge points to separate them in the standings when the lights come on at Xcel Energy Center tonight in Minnesota.
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