At the Rink: Lightning at Avalanche

DENVER -- The Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche have overcome slow starts to move into the Stanley Cup Playoffs picture heading into their game Tuesday at Pepsi Center (9 p.m. ET; NBCSN).

The Lightning (21-17-4) have gone 10-6-1 since Dec. 2 to climb within one point of the New Jersey Devils for the second wild card from the Eastern Conference.

The Avalanche (21-19-3) have gone 12-5-2 since Dec. 1 to tie the Nashville Predators for points (45 each) in the race for the second wild card from the Western Conference. The Predators hold the tiebreaker because they have played one fewer game.

Colorado missed the playoffs last season; Tampa Bay advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, where the Lightning lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in six games.

The Lightning have won two of the first three games of a four-game road trip with back-to-back wins against the Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks.

"Coming into this trip we had to make some adjustments to our game, more so to our compete and our work ethic," Lightning center Steven Stamkos said Tuesday after an optional morning skate. "I think that's what fuels our team when we're going well. We know we have the skill and the speed, but when we're outworking teams, we find it to be a recipe for success. Hopefully we finish this trip off strong tonight and get back home and go from there. We still have a lot of work to do."

After opening the season with three wins, the Lightning lost seven of their next nine, with five of the defeats coming in regulation. They would match their longest streak of the season, three games, with a win against the Avalanche.

"We struggled to start and we had a lot of injuries to some key players, but we just weren't playing consistent hockey like we were last year," said Stamkos, who has 18 goals and 31 points in 42 games. "When you don't afford yourself a cushion with the start that we had, you're playing catch-up hockey all year. It's so tight that you're right in the mix, so that's a good thing. We're just past the halfway point in the season and there's still a lot of hockey to be played. I think we realize that we have to play a little more desperate, and we've done that lately.

"You need those three-, four-, five-, six-game winning streaks to continue to climb. We've had three or four, so we're on the right path. There's a lot of teams in the same situation. It seems like every night for the most part you're playing a team that is in desperation mode as well. That's why it's so hard in this League to win consistently."

The Avalanche are coming off a 6-3 road loss Sunday to the Blackhawks after winning three home games in a row for the first time this season. They're 9-9-3 at Pepsi Center.

"We have to use this game to get back on track," Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said. "We have to make sure we take care of business right here. We had a lot of road games the first half of the season and we're excited to keep this thing going. We're back to .500 at home now and we want to climb on top of that and keep playing strong at home. We didn't play as bad as the results show (against Chicago), and it's not going to bother us."

Here are the projected lineups:

LIGHTNING

Ondrej Palat - Steven Stamkos - Vladislav Namestnikov

Alex Killorn - Tyler Johnson - Nikita Kucherov

Cedric Paquette - Valtteri Filppula - Ryan Callahan

J.T. Brown - Brian Boyle - Erik Condra

Victor Hedman - Anton Stralman

Jason Garrison - Andrej Sustr

Nikita Nesterov - Braydon Coburn

Ben Bishop

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Injured: Joel Vermin (hand)

Scratched: Matthew Carle, Jonathan Marchessault

AVALANCHE

Alex Tanguay - Nathan MacKinnon - Matt Duchene

Gabriel Landeskog - Carl Soderberg - Blake Comeau

Andreas Martinsen - Mikhail Grigorenko - Jarome Iginla

Cody McLeod - John Mitchell - Jack Skille

Francois Beauchemin - Andrew Bodnarchuk

Nick Holden - Tyson Barrie

Zach Redmond - Nate Guenin

Semyon Varlamov

Calvin Pickard

Injured: Reto Berra (ankle), Erik Johnson (lower body), Ben Street (chest), Brad Stuart (back), Jesse Winchester (head)

Scratched: Brandon Gormley, Chris Wagner

Status report: Johnson skated Monday for the first time since getting injured Jan. 4 against the Los Angeles Kings. "Progress there," Roy said. "We'll know more the more he's going to be on the ice."

Who's hot: Kucherov has two goals and one assist in a two-game point streak. … Namestnikov has three assists in a two-game streak. … Landeskog has two goals and two assists in a four-game streak. … MacKinnon has two goals and two assists in a three-game streak.