Music: {allcanada} Avalanche face Oilers as long shot to make playoffs

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The Fault in Our Stars / Divergent / The Descendants

EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalanche did not to skate Wednesday prior to their game at Rexall Place.

Colorado (33-27-12) is 10 points behind the Winnipeg Jets for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference with 10 games to play. The Avalanche have lost two straight but have seven wins in their past 11 games.

Edmonton (20-40-13) has two wins in their past 11 games and lost 4-1 to the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday. The Oilers have been eliminated from playoff contention for the ninth consecutive season.

Goaltender Ben Scrivens is expected to make his eighth consecutive start for the Oilers. Goalie Semyon Varlamov has started the past five games for Colorado and will play against Edmonton.

Here are the projected lineups:

AVALANCHE

John Mitchell - Matt Duchene - Jarome Iginla

Gabriel Landeskog - Ryan O'Reilly - Alex Tanguay

Cody McLeod - Marc-Andre Cliche - Dennis Everberg

Jordan Caron - Freddie Hamilton - Daniel Briere

Nate Guenin - Tyson Barrie

Jan Hejda - Zach Redmond

Brad Stuart - Nick Holden

Semyon Varlamov

Reto Berra

Scratched: Joey Hishon

Injured: Jesse Winchester (head), Jamie McGinn (back), Erik Johnson (knee), Ryan Wilson (shoulder), Nathan MacKinnon (foot), Borna Rendulic (leg), Patrick Bordeleau (knee)

OILERS

Benoit Pouliot - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Jordan Eberle

Teddy Purcell - Derek Roy – Nail Yakupov

Taylor Hall – Anton Lander – Andrew Miller

Matt Hendricks – Boyd Gordon - Rob Klinkhammer

Oscar Klefbom - Justin Schultz

Martin Marincin - Mark Fayne

Nikita Nikitin – Keith Aulie

Ben Scrivens

Richard Bachman

Scratched: Luke Gazdic, Matt Fraser

Injured: Tyler Pitlick (lacerated spleen), Viktor Fasth (knee), Iiro Pakarinen (knee), Andrew Ference (upper body).

Status report: Hall will play his third game since returning from a leg injury. He has two assists in two games after missing 23 of the past 24 games … Ference sustained an upper-body injury in the loss to Winnipeg and is not expected to play … Gordon, who left the game Monday with a sore back, will be a game-time decision.

Who's hot: Nugent-Hopkins is on a six-game point streak with four goals and seven assists … Duchene has a goal and three assists in his past five games … O'Reilly has three goals and three assists in his past four games.

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