Projected Lineup: Avalanche at Wild

The Colorado Avalanche faces the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center this evening to wrap up the four-game season series with its Central Division rival.
Goaltender Semyon Varlamov will start in net and appear in his 14th straight game. He has started in 11 of the Avs' last 13 games and owns a 18-13-6 record with a 2.85 goals-against average and .913 save percentage.
The Wild hold the third position in the Central Division standings with 85 points, and the Avs are tied for the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference but have the tiebreaker with more regulation and overtime wins.

"Everybody is trying to make that final push for the playoffs, it's been really exciting," said Avalanche forward Tyson Jost. "That's what you want to be doing this time of the year, playing meaningful hockey and that is what we are doing right now. It's really fun to come to the rink and knowing that every game matters for us, I mean it's exciting. That's where you want to be as an NHL player is playing in the playoffs and playing to get in the playoffs, and that's where we are at right now so we want to keep that going."
The Avalanche is 2-0-1 in the 2017-18 series and have outscored Minnesota by a combined scored of 14-3 in the last two meetings, both coming at Pepsi Center.
"This is a deep team and their record at home is exceptional," head coach Jared Bednar said of the Wild. "We are going to have to be at our best tonight in order to get points out of here tonight. I know we have had real good success against them at home, we have looked at some of the reasons why. Our team is aware of it, and now it's going to come down to effort and execution here tonight against the Wild."
The forward combinations are expected to be different than they were in the Avs' last game as Dominic Toninato will return to the lineup on Colorado's fourth line with Gabriel Bourque and Alexander Kerfoot.
Below is the anticipated lineup for Colorado. All line combinations and defensive pairings are subject to change.

Forwards

92 Gabriel Landeskog - 29 Nathan MacKinnon - 96 Mikko Rantanen
17 Tyson Jost - 37 J.T. Compher - 10 Sven Andrighetto
83 Matt Nieto - 34 Carl Soderberg - 14 Blake Comeau
57 Gabriel Bourque - 13 Alexander Kerfoot - 47 Dominic Toninato

Defensemen

16 Nikita Zadorov - 4 Tyson Barrie
12 Patrik Nemeth - 49 Samuel Girard
15 Duncan Siemens - 5 David Warsofsky

Goaltenders

1 Semyon Varlamov (Starter)
30 Spencer Martin (Backup)
Colorado will continue a stretch of three straight games against Central Division opponents on Thursday and Friday. The Avalanche plays at the St. Louis Blues on Thursday and faces the Nashville Predators in the Mile High City the next day for its 10th back-to-back set of the season.