Round Robin Projected Lineup: Avalanche at Stars

Pavel Francouz will be in between the pipes today when the Colorado Avalanche continues its Stanley Cup Qualifier schedule against the Dallas Stars at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta.

Francouz, who will be making his NHL postseason debut, ended the 2019-20 regular season tied for fifth in the NHL in save percentage (.923) and ranked seventh in goals-against average (2.41). He was the first Avalanche netminder to finish among the league's top 10 in both categories since David Aebischer in 2003-04.

Goaltender Philipp Grubauer will be the backup after making 31 saves in the Avs' 2-1 win against the St. Louis Blues on Sunday. The netminders split time in goal in the Avalanche's exhibition game against the Minnesota Wild last Wednesday, the last outing that Francouz played in.

"We are going to try and keep everyone going here and we feel confident in both guys," head coach Jared Bednar said in his pregame media availability. "We don't want it to be too long for [Francouz] in between games."

Bednar also noted this morning that he will make a couple other changes to the lineup tonight but did not say what the differences will be.

Dallas opened its 2020 postseason with a 5-3 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday. Colorado is set to face Vegas in its third and final round-robin contest on Saturday.

"I thought Vegas came out of the first period with a lead at 1-0 I believe, and I thought Dallas might have been the better team through the first. Certainly Dallas turned up their play in the second period and gave Vegas a lot of trouble getting out of their zone," Bednar said of the matchup between the Stars and Golden Knights. "They had a heavy forecheck and kept some pressure on Vegas and threw a lot of pucks from odd areas and bad angles to the net and got rewarded a few times to take the lead.

"Vegas really regrouped I thought in the third period and kind of gave Dallas a taste of their own medicine in the third, pressured the puck real well… It was a hard-working game, it had pretty good pace and intensity to it. Both teams got rewarded for going to the hard areas even though it was a pretty tight-checking game."

Below is Colorado's projected lineup for the game against the Stars, based on the start of the team's previous outing against St. Louis. The forward combinations and defensive pairings are expected to change.

Forwards

95 Andre Burakovsky - 29 Nathan MacKinnon - 96 Mikko Rantanen
92 Gabriel Landeskog - 91 Nazem Kadri - 13 Valeri Nichushkin
90 Vladislav Namestnikov - 37 J.T. Compher - 72 Joonas Donskoi
17 Tyson Jost - 41 Pierre-Edouard Bellemare - 11 Matt Calvert

Defensemen

27 Ryan Graves - 8 Cale Makar
49 Samuel Girard - 6 Erik Johnson
16 Nikita Zadorov - 28 Ian Cole

Goaltenders

39 Pavel Francouz
31 Philipp Grubauer