DENVER, Colo. -- It’s hard to look at a hockey game in November and deem it as a must-win game while keeping a straight face. Joel Quenneville might be able to, but even that’s a stretch.

Instead, the Chicago Blackhawks coach stayed just short of it and called Wednesday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche “very meaningful.” He looked at it as a two-fold chance to bounce back from Sunday’s flop in Vancouver and start the second half of the six-game road trip on a positive note.

“I think this is a big two points for both teams tonight,” Quenneville said. “We want to basically start this portion of our trip in a positive way and capture that momentum we had going into Vancouver. Outside of that game, I thought our game was going in the right direction. And we want to make sure that we play the right way, which is the most important thing tonight.”

A win against the pesky Avalanche could go a long way in deciding what kind of road trip this ends of being for the Hawks.

Not only would two points be a nice shot of confidence heading into a back-to-back over the weekend in southern California to face the Pacific leading Anaheim Ducks and the defending champion L.A. Kings -- both seemingly better competition than the injury-savaged Avalanche -- but it would also be another step in the right direction after a good (though not great) start to the season, especially because it would be against a team they’ve recently had so many struggles against.

The Avalanche, who rallied late to win the Central Division last year, have won four of the past five meetings between the two teams and eight of their past 11 home games against the Hawks.

“They are a team that works hard and got a lot of skill, and we’ve had trouble in this building,” said Andrew Shaw, who will return after missing three games with an upper-body injury. “We have to come out hard, and we got to push early. They are a hungry team up there, and they got a lot to prove, and so do we.”

The Hawks are starting to play better, though. They edged the Calgary Flames to start the road trip and demolished the Edmonton Oilers last week to extend their win streak to three games. But on their third game in four nights, they ran out of energy and fortune in a 4-1 loss at Vancouver.

Quenneville said his team needs to continue to pile wins together because it only gets harder later in the season.

“Life-and-death to try and make the playoffs at the end of the year can be taxing,” Quenneville said. “We know that we want some good going into the playoffs, but certainly we don’t want to be in position playing life-and-death to try to get in Games 81 and 82.”