The season starts tonight, and where it matters, in Colorado, the Avalanche take on the Chicago Blackhawks at the Pepsi Center to get the season started right. I don’t know who the Avs pay off to get great match-ups on opening night, but I like it.

If you need get squared away for the start of the season, or if you just want to get psyched up for tonight’s game, and the 2010-11 season, you should listen to a few solid podcasts (that I was involved with, of course:-) ).

First up, Jay Vean of The Avs Hockey Podcast and I did a preseason podcast this week that gets you up to date with what happened in the offseason, and what to expect in the months ahead. A great opening night primer, which you can find here. Also, I’m going to be doing more with the Avs Hockey Podcast this season. Jay was gracious enough to invite me to be a bigger part of his show, and it’s going to be a fun season. If you don’t listen to it already, and you’re and Avalanche fan, you are missing out. The iTunes page can be found here.

Over on The Rink, my main podcast, I posted a Avalanche roundtable podcast. After the first day of training camp, I got together with Justin of The Avalanche Guild, Ryan and Jonathan of The Burgundy Blog, and Angelique from the Colorado Avalanche Prospects blog, all hosted by James Kyle. We talked a lot about what we saw, and how we think the Avs will do this year based on what we saw. You can find it here.

I’ll probably be watching the later half of the game after work, most likely in a bar in downtown Chicago (Stocks and Blondes seems like the most likely). I’ll be the guy in the Avs jersey, possibly getting the crap kicked out of him. But it’s the start of the hockey season, so at least I’ll be smiling.