Duchene Out 4 Weeks

The MRI results came in for Matt Duchene and things are not as good as they could have been, although, they probably could have been much worse. The Avalanche expect to be without their top forward for the next four weeks, because of the knee injury that he suffered on Thursday night. There didn't appear to be too much in the way of specifics to the knee injury, but the time frame is what's more important, for us poolies, any way.

The Avalanche have not been great and that could be the cause of Duchene's lack of production or it could be vice versa, as the team relies heavily on the young centre. In 39 games, Duchene only has 12 goals and 12 assists, which is only good enough for 114th in pool scoring this year, having a scoring pace of 0.62 points-per-game. I believe in a lot of circles, there is plenty of belief that Duchene will be a point-per-game scorer in the NHL, but the team around him probably has to improve for him to get there.

This is a big hit to another money team, as Dale C. will certainly miss Duchene from his roster, as he was counting on the Avalanche star to keep him in the conversation.  Dale currently sits in 4th place, 6 points behind 1st place and only 1 point better than 5th.  The loss of Duchene may certainly be significant, but it may not be enough to close up the 18-point gap between himself and 6th place.  Nevertheless, the designs on reaching the pinnacle of the standings may be put on hold for a while.