Morning Skate Update: Stalock starts; Makar out for Avalanche

A couple of updates with the defending Cup champions as the opponent.

A quick round of updates as the Chicago Blackhawks kick off a new week by facing the Colorado Avalanche in Denver on Monday night.

First, for the visitors, a the goaltending position remains the same but there will be a change on the blue line:

Neither is too surprising, as Stalock has been the Hawks best goalie all season and will likely continue playing until there’s a reason to not play him. The Blackhawks have also been extra cautious in how they handle young players lately so it’s not a total surprise to see Kaiser get a night off after making his NHL debut over the weekend.

Over the weekend, there was an interesting quote from Calgary Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson on this very topic of young players being scratched from the lineup at times:

Anyway … some reinforcements will be joining the Hawks later on this road trip:

As for Colorado, it’s been dealing with injuries to key players all season long and it appears another one just happened, although it may not be cause for significant alarm for the residents of the Rocky Mountains:

And here’s your starting goalie for the Avalanche:

Projected Lineups

Blackhawks

Reichel — Kurashev — Athanasiou

T. Johnson — Dickinson — Raddysh

Hardman — Entwistle — Robinson

Katchouk — Khaira — Anderson

C. Jones — S. Jones

Tinordi — Murphy

Zaitsev — Mitchell

Stalock

Khudobin

Avalanche

Rodrigues — MacKinnon — Rantanen

Nichushkin — Compher — Malgin

Cogliano — Eller — O’Connor

Nieto — Newhook — Galchenyuk

Toews — Girard

Johnson — Byram

MacDermid — Hunt

Georgiev

Johansson