The Colorado Avalanche (4-4-0) are winners of its last two games and three of the last four but the injury bug just keeps on biting.

Defenseman Cale Makar becomes the latest Av headed to the injured list. Just when he was starting to find his legs after sitting out all of preseason too. Makar suffered and "upper body" injury in Saturday's win and will not play against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Makar joins an already who's-who on Colorado's injured list with names like Mikko Rantanen (lower-body), Andre Burakovsky (lower-body), Devon Toews (recovering from shoulder surgery), Valeri Nichushkin (wrist) and Pavel Francouz (lower-body).

Like I've written before, some players are coming back sooner rather than later, but it's still unsettling to see this many bodies on the shelf this early.

Good teams need to deal with adversity. I get that, but come on... this is getting a little ridiculous.

Luckily the schedule is in Colorado's favor. The Avalanche play just four games in the next 17 days. This is the lightest stretch of the Avs schedule not including the 24-day break in February for the Olympics.

At least they have that going for them.

----

Some quick hits to whet the appetite ahead of the Blue Jackets game.

Who's hot?

With all the injuries somebody has to step up. In the Avs case it's been J.T. Compher. Dudes been a beast. His four goals are tied with the captain for the team lead and his eight points trail only Nathan MacKinnon (1g 8a) for the team lead.

Other notable offensive standouts include:

- Nazem Kadri - 3 G and 3 A in 8 games and no suspension... yet. He does have 24 PIMs and a misconduct, but who's counting?

- Bowen Byram - 1 G and 4 A in 8 games with 1 GWG and 4 points 5v5.


Speaking of standing out, let's talk about standing up; as in standing up for his teammates:

How about Big Nate dropping the gloves to stick up for Byram? It wasn't a pretty fight but he sent a message loud and clear to the rest of the team. Gotta love when the super stars get their hands dirty for the good of the squad.

Lastly, Jonas Johansson is expected to start on Wednesday vs CLB. Johansson (0-1) allowed three goals on 37 shots in a 4-1 loss in his first start vs. Florida. Something tells me we get a better result this time around.

Thanks for reading,
Steve

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