Carolina Hurricanes at Colorado Avalanche: Lineups and Game Discussion

The Carolina Hurricanes are swinging out west for the second time in this young season with a pair of games this week in Colorado and Arizona.

Tonight, the Canes take on the Colorado Avalanche, a team that posted a near-historic poor season last year, but also a team that managed to best the Canes in botth of their meetings a season ago. The Hurricanes will seek out some measure of redemption as they arrive in Denver for their only visit of the season.

In a bit of a surprise, the Canes will send Cam Ward out between the pipes. While heretofore anointed starter Scott Darling has gotten off to a rather stilted start, Ward has been impressive in his two outings thus far in posting a .941 save percentage on 85 shots.

With the injury to Brett Pesce causing a change to the defensive pairings, and the call-up of Patrick Brown to replace Janne Kuokkanen, the Canes lineup could be a bit more in flux this evening. The expected lineup for Carolina is below:

Sebastian Aho - Jordan Staal - Elias Lindholm
Teuvo Teravainen - Victor Rask - Justin Williams
Jeff Skinner - Derek Ryan - Josh Jooris
Joakim Nordstrom - Marcus Kruger - Brock McGinn

Jaccob Slavin - Trevor van Riemsdyk
Haydn Fleury - Justin Faulk
Noah Hanifin - Klas Dahlbeck

Cam Ward
Scott Darling

Scratches: Patrick Brown (healthy), Lee Stempniak (injured), Roland McKeown (healthy)

The Avalanche enter the game rested and seeking to continue their decent start to the 2017-18 season. They have been idle since Saturday, when they were able to double up the Chicago Blackhawks 6-3 at home. Their lineup to begin the night is as follows:

Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen
Sven Andrighetto - Matt Duchene - Rocco Grimaldi
Matt Nieto - Carl Soderberg - Blake Comeau
A.J. Greer - Alexander Kerfoot - Nail Yakupov

Anton Lindholm - Erik Johnson
Patrik Nemeth - Tyson Barrie
Andrei Mironov - Mark Barberio

Semyon Varlamov
Jonathan Bernier (backup)