Avalanche forward Jonathan Drouin to miss Wednesday’s game with upper-body injury

Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar announced that forward Jonathan Drouin would miss Wednesday’s game versus the Chicago Blackhawks due to an upper-body injury.

Drouin has appeared in nine games this season after starting the 2024-25 campaign on injured reserve, he returned for 16 games before missing action again. In nine games, Drouin has tallied three goals and five assists for eight points. With Drouin now being sidelined again with an injury, it will be the 33rd game this season he has missed.

“It’s been a long year. Kind of play a couple games and get reinjured,” Drouin told reporters last month. “The same kind of thing happened, and kind of redo the whole process of all the rehab and treatment. It’s very similar, very close to the same one I had to start the year in the first game.”

Drouin scored a career-high 56 points in his first season with the Avalanche in 2023-24, scoring 19 goals and adding 37 assists. Now in his 11th season, Drouin has 98 goals and 243 assists for 341 points with Colorado, the Montreal Canadians and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Bednar also announced that forward Valeri Nichushkin would also miss Wednesday’s game versus Chicago. Nichushkin has tallied 11 goals and 17 points in 21 games since his return to the Avs’ lineup.

The 29-year-old is coming off his most successful season in which he approached point-per-game production in collecting 28 goals and 25 assists through 54 games. Per PuckPedia, Nichushkin is in the third year of an eight-year pact that carries a $6.125-million annual average value.

Bednar also announced that goaltender Trent Miner will make his National Hockey League (NHL) debut vs. Chicago. Miner was selected in the seventh round in the 2019 NHL Draft.