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Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporter
The Colorado Avalanche will be without leading goal scorer Ross Colton, who is set to miss the next six to eight weeks after breaking his foot, coach Jared Bednar told reporters Wednesday.
Colton, whose eight goals are also tied for third in the NHL, was placed on injured reserve earlier in the day with Bednar later confirming that the club would be without one of its strongest contributors through the first 10 games of the season.
Bednar told reporters that the Avs would also be without forward Miles Wood for at least a week as he recovers from an upper-body injury.
Colton sustained the injury Monday in the second period of the Avs’ 5-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.
Losing Colton is the latest development in what has been an inconsistent start for the 2022 Stanley Cup champions. The Avs opened the regular season with four straight losses in which they allowed more than five goals in those defeats.
The Avalanche then won five straight while averaging more than four goals per game before losing to the Blackhawks. The Avs (5-5) entered Wednesday a point behind the Calgary Flames and the Seattle Kraken in the wild-card race.
While the Avalanche still have stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen, the loss of Colton means they will be missing another player who has been crucial to their plans of generating secondary and tertiary goals.
The Avs were already missing forwards Jonathan Drouin and Artturi Lehkonen before Colton’s injury. Drouin has only played once this season as he recovers from an upper-body injury, while Lehkonen, who has resumed skating, is yet to play this season. He has been dealing with shoulder injury, with Bednar telling reporters that the team should know more about his situation later in the day.
In addition to Colton, Drouin, Lehkonen and Wood, the team is also still without captain Gabriel Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin. Landeskog, who has not played since 2022, continues to recover from knee surgery while Nichushkin remains under suspension as part of being placed in Stage 3 of the NHL/NHL Players’ Association player assistance program.
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