Avalanche
The Colorado Avalanche will look to take a 2-0 series lead today against Arizona in the teams’ first-round playoff series. The Avs won Game 1 3-0 after scoring three goals in a span of 1:23 in the third period.
It’s a quick turnaround then as Game 3 is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday.
Avs head coach Jared Bednar has yet to reveal who will be starting in goal for any of the remaining games of the series, but with a back-to-back there’s a chance that Pavel Francouz could get one of the starts, most likely in Game 3.
- TheAthletic.com’s Ryan S. Clark put out the second edition of Ian Cole’s rundown of how the playoffs are going in the bubble. This time he wrote about winning Game 1, playing back-to-backs and Phil Kessel.
Avs-Coyotes schedule and results
| Game | Result | |
| Game 1 | Colorado 3, Arizona 0 | Box score |
| Game 2 | Colorado 3, Arizona 2 | Box score |
| Game 3 | Arizona 4, Colorado 2 | Box score |
| Game 4 | Colorado 7, Arizona 1 | Box score |
| Game 5 | Colorado 7, Arizona 1 | Box score |
Nuggets
The Nuggets play their final seeding game today against Toronto (11:30 a.m., Altitude), but it basically will be an exhibition as all the playoff seeds have been set. The Nuggets finished as the third seed and will face No. 6 Utah in the first round starting Monday.
The rest of the first-round schedule was set and will see division rivals Denver and Utah square off with one day off between each game, the complete schedule is listed below.
- The Nuggets and Jazz have met four times previously in the playoffs with Utah winning three times and Denver just once.
- TheAthletic.com’s Kendra Andrews took a look at the first-round matchup and it should be a good one.
- TheDNVR.com’s Adam Mares did a video breakdown of the growing chemistry between the Nuggets key players.
| Date | Time (MT) | Channels |
| Mon., Aug. 17 | 11:30 a.m. | ESPN, Altitude |
| Wed., Aug. 19 | 2 p.m. | TNT, Altitude |
| Fri., Aug. 21 | 2 p.m. | TNT, Altitude |
| Sun., Aug. 23 | 7 p.m. | TNT, Altitude |
| *Tue., Aug. 25 | TBD | TBD, Altitude |
| *Thur., Aug. 27 | TBD | TBD, Altitude |
| Sat., Aug. 29 | TBD | TBD, Altitude |
Rockies
The Rockies will look to end their two-game losing streak as they welcome in the Rangers for a three-game series starting tonight (6:40 p.m., AT&T Sports Net, 850 AM) at Coors Field.
Rookie Ryan Castellani (0-0, 0.00 ERA) will be making his second career start and first at home for Colorado, while Lance Lynn (2-0, 1.16 ERA) gets the start for Texas.
The Denver Post’s Kyle Newman wrote about how two years spent in Double-A working and refining his craft paved the way for Castellani to reach the majors.
- MLB.com took at look at trade deadline questions for the five National League West teams. For the Rockies the question was whether Jairo Díaz can handle the closer role? If not Colorado might need to acquire someone via trade. And the fact is with the bullpen’s struggles of late the Rockies might want to do so regardless of how Díaz pitches going forward.
Broncos
The Broncos have their first training camp practice today, just a day before the team was originally scheduled to open the preseason before COVID-19 changed everything around.
Now, with the preseason scrapped entirely, the focus is 100% on Denver’s first game Monday, Sept. 14 against Tennessee at Empower Field.
With that in mind The Denver Post’s Ryan O’Halloran, Kyle Newman and Mark Kiszla weighed in on six of the most pressing questions facing the Broncos.
- With training camp closed to fans this season DenverBroncos.com still is giving fans the chance to watch training camp online. The site will have a daily, one-hour show hosted by Steve Atwater. You’ll be able to tune in every day at 9:15 a.m. via DenverBroncos.com, the Broncos365 app, as well as on Facebook and YouTube.
- TheDNVR.com’s Andrew Mason looked at what to expect as training camp 2020 opens.
- And lastly, TheAthletic.com ranked all NFL teams based on continuity. They looked at coaches and quarterbacks returning as well as all expected snaps from the previous year coming back. Where did that leave the Broncos? No. 18, that’s ahead of the Chargers (25th), but behind both the Chiefs (1st) and Raiders (9th).
