Tonight at 9 p.m. ET, the Colorado Avalanche and Minnesota Wild play the opening game of their seasons live from the Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota. The game can be live streamed for free 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 is coming off of a season where they finished with the third-best record in the NHL while Minnesota made the postseason for the second straight year. The Wild topped the Avalanche in a decisive Game 7 in overtime and then lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in six games in Round 2.
One of the defining moments of the series happened in Game 3 when Avalanche defenseman Tyson Barrie was taken out of the series from a knee-to-knee hit by Wild forward Matt Cooke.
"That was, mentally, probably the toughest thing I've gone through," Barrie said via NHL.com. "But you have to let it go. This is a new season, a new team and we've got a good young exciting team and that's not going to be our last time in the playoffs."
Cooke maintained that the hit was an accident, though the league suspended him seven games for the hit.
"It's amazing how a split second either way, hits could be drastically different. It's just trying to make the right decisions in your brain before you put yourself in that position," Cooke told NHL.com. "The league made a decision and I had to live with it. At the end of the day, I have a job to do and that's to help my team win."
The Avalanche will look a bit different without center Paul Stastny, who departed through free agency and signed with the rival St. Louis Blues, but they have a lot of weapons that still make the team formidable and brought in Jarome Iginla to replace him.
Nathan MacKinnon took home the Calder trophy as the NHL's top rookie last season while Patrick Roy won the Jack Adams award as the league's best coach in his first year behind the Colorado bench. The Avalanche went 52-22-8 and finished with 112 points last season.
Matt Duchene paced Colorado with 70 points off of 23 goals and 47 assists while Gabriel Landeskog had 26 tallies and 39 helpers to rank second with 65 points and Ryan O'Reilly found the twine 28 times and added 36 assists for 64 points.
The Wild nabbed a wild-card spot in the playoffs after going 43-27-12 with 98 points and the team brought in University of Minnesota product Thomas Vanek in the offseason.
Jason Pominville paced Minnesota with 60 points off of 30 goals and 30 assists while Zach Parise had 29 markers and 27 helpers for 56 points and Mikko Koivu lit the lamp 11 times and added 43 assists for 54 points.
In net, Minnesota will turn to Darcy Kuemper while Colorado will go with Semyon Varlamov.
Kuemper went 12-8-4 last season with a 2.43 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage.
Varlamov, meanwhile, led the league with 41 wins last season and ranked third in the NHL with a .927 save percentage while posting a 2.41 goals-against average.
It's a Round 1 Stanley Cup Playoffs rematch when the puck drops on the Avalanche and Wild tonight at the Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota as part of NHL Opening Week.
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