Pre-game thoughts: Jackets look for redemption

Tonight will be the Jackets second meeting of the season with the Colorado Avalanche. The Avalanche have owned the Jackets in their overall series which included a 5-1 loss at Colorado back in October.

The Jackets will look to redeem themselves against this squad tonight. Both squads are struggling a bit with the Avalanche going 4-6 in their past 10 and the Jackest going 4-4-2 over that span.

Keys to lighting em up

Battle of the injuries. Both teams are suffering through key injuries so the key here is -- which team's depth players will step up and make a difference tonight?

Need more energy. The Jackets need to come out with much more energy tonight than they did against the Stars.

Scoring...anyone.......anyone? It would be nice to see Nasher get back on a roll but more importantly this team needs some secondary scorers to show more consistantly. Curtis Glencross has stepped up a bit recently... can he keep it going? Can Chimera, Fritsche, Fedorov or Brule pots one? Maybe new call up Joakim Lindstrom can make a case for himself tonight?

Need some power on the play. The CBJ PP has dropped all the way to 22nd in the league and for good reason -- its been brutal recently. Look for Hitch to change things up in that arena to look for a spark. The good news is that the Avalanche PP is even worse than ours clocking in at 27 in the NHL - ouch.

With Sakic out the Jackets need to shut down Stastny who leads the team with 31 points in in 26 gp.

Leclaire needs to outplay Budaj who hasn't been the greatest this year evident by his .897 save %. Compare that to Leclaire's .934 save % and it would seem we'd have the advantage there -- so we need to take advantage.

Don't let the Avalanche get in our heads. The Jackets are 2-22-2 against this team overall. Man is that horrible. Screw the record. This game is about tonight and the Jackets need to approach it that way.

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I won't be able to make this one live tonight. I have a feeling with the snow storm that Nationwide is gonna get pretty empty. If you can make, go and cheer on our boys. I'll be watching this one from home and will be right back at it for Saturday's game against the Wild.

Go Jackets!!

-LTL