Avs hope to keep momentum rolling in two games at home

The root issue of the Avalanche’s recent five-game winless steak — snapped by Sunday’s 4-1 victory at Edmonton — was never one of identity.

In fact, ask around the Colorado locker room, and players are confident the 1-3-1 mark in those games isn’t indicative of the team’s potential. Captain Gabe Landeskog said “you haven’t seen the best of us yet,” while Tyson Jost asserted that the Avs “can set another bar” after making noise against the top-seeded Predators in the first round of the playoffs last season.

“Last year, you saw how much we grew throughout the year,” Jost said. “To start the year, everybody counted us out, and then they were like, ‘OK, maybe this Avs team can actually play.’ Then, at the end of the year, we’re in the playoffs. Even now this year, everyone said we’re maybe on the brink of not being able to make the playoffs, but we just want to prove people wrong.”

Colorado also knows there’s business to immediately take care of starting Wednesday at the Pepsi Center, where the Avs face the Bruins for an 8 p.m. puck drop back on home ice for just the second time in nearly three weeks.

“You never want to wait and push that progress ahead — you want to get to that (expected) level as soon as you can, and for us, starting on a positive note here in these next two home games will be a start to doing that,” Landeskog said.

On Friday, Colorado (8-6-3, fifth in Central division) hosts the defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals before heading back out on the road. The upcoming home games should provide another pair of early-season litmus tests for the Avs.