Colorado comes home after two rough losses

Though the Avalanche has given up 13 goals in the last two games head coach Jared Bednar is confident his group will rebound in Wednesday’s home contest against Western Conference-leading Nashville.

Following a self-proclaimed bad game at Calgary last Thursday (6-5 loss) the Avs lost at Vancouver 7-6.

“I’m concerned about the way Calgary went, and I addressed that,” Bednar said Tuesday.

Added defenseman Patrick Nemeth: “We didn’t really do what we’re supposed to do. Actually, the Vancouver game wasn’t as bad as we thought. It doesn’t really reflect the game, seven goals against, in my opinion.”

A positive to come out of Colorado’s 0-1-1 road trip in western Canada was that secondary scoring started flowing in, which means the Avs won’t have to rely solely on the workhorse line of Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen.

Alex Kerfoot had a goal and three assists in the back-to-back set, and Sheldon Dries had the first two scores of his career to complement scoring from Vladislav Kamenev, Colin Wilson, Carl Soderberg and defensemen Nikita Zadorov and Ian Cole.

“It’s all about consistency really. You can’t just score here and there or try and produce when you’re feeling good,” Kerfoot said of his contributions. “So we want to do it on a consistent basis up and down our lineup. It was a good start, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

Nashville gives the Avs a stern test to see if they can improve their weaknesses on defense.

“I see a little bit more fire out of their group this year than I saw through the regular season last year, hence the start,” Bednar said of Nashville. “This is a team that’s firing on all cylinders. We know they have the ability to be a Cup contender and they’re certainly playing that way.”

Help could come for the Avs with the return of Tyson Jost from a head injury. The secondyear forward participated in a full practice on Tuesday and might be available Wednesday.

“We’re a fast team. We work hard. We’re relentless on pucks, and when we’re playing that way we’re a really hard team to beat,” said Jost. “So we’ve got to get back to playing that way.”

Semyon Varlamov will start in net.

Footnotes.

Sven Andrighetto and JT Compher both skated Tuesday in red non-contact jerseys. Andrighetto may be available for the Avs on the two-game road trip that starts Friday. Compher isn’t progressing at this time, according to Bednar, and there is no set timetable on his return....The Avs will wear their division rival third jersey Wednesday.