Colorado Can Gain Ground on Division-Leading Vegas

It's not quite a must-win game for the Colorado Avalanche, but the team is aware of the opportunity available to it this evening as it chases the Vegas Golden Knights for first place in the West Division.
Vegas currently leads the division and ranks second overall in the NHL with 70 points, four more than Colorado's 66. However, the Avs have a game in hand and can close the gap with the Knights with a victory tonight at T-Mobile Arena.
"We certainly want to play the right way and give ourselves the best chance of winning tonight to tighten this up," said head coach Jared Bednar after morning skate. "We get two points back with a game in hand, and we still have another crack at these guys… There is some runway left here (with the schedule) even if we were to lose it, but our team is focused on doing what we can to come out and check these guys hard and frustrate them and go get two points."

This will be the seventh of eight meetings between the Avalanche and Golden Knights this season and the third of four in Las Vegas. Colorado is 3-2-1 versus Vegas this year and went 1-0-1 in the club's last two-game set in Denver on March 25-27 and 1-1-0 in the previous games in Southern Nevada on Feb. 14-16.
So far the Avs are 1-2-0 on this four-game road trip that featured the first three contests at the St. Louis Blues. Colorado has dropped its past two outings, falling 5-3 on Saturday and 4-1 on Monday, marking only the second time this season the squad has lost consecutive games in regulation with the only other occurrence coming Feb. 22-24.
The Avalanche sports a 10-3-0 record after a defeat of any kind this season.
"We know it's a big game for us. They have a good team on the other side, so we're going to have to play a better game than what we did in St. Louis, that is for sure," said defenseman Samuel Girard. "We're going to have to play like the way we know we can do. We have to use our speed, and we have to play a simple game as well."
Bednar said his squad is going to have to balance its physicality against the Golden Knights, who have won a franchise-record nine games in a row. The Avs coach is looking for his players to check hard and be competitive on pucks while remaining smart in its discipline.
"We're going to have to be a hard team to play against. We're going to have to check the proper way, put enough importance on our defensive structure in our game and we're going to have to be highly competitive," Bednar said. "This is the No. 1 team in our division, [second-best] team in the league actually right now. They're riding a nine-game win streak, things are going well for them. It's a deep team, so we're going to have to be smart and work extremely hard and be extremely competitive here tonight."
The Avalanche and Golden Knights conclude the regular-season set on May 10 at T-Mobile Arena.

LINEUP NOTES

Devan Dubnyk will make his fourth start with the Avalanche since being acquired in a trade on April 10. He has a 2-1-0 record in his first three games with the club.
The rest of the Avs' personnel for the matchup will be the same, but there will be a few minor adjustments to the forward alignments. The defensive pairings will stay the same.
Nazem Kadri will center a line with Tyson Jost and Valeri Nichushkin, while Kiefer Sherwood will be on a wing with Carl Soderberg and J.T. Compher. Martin Kaut will go back onto a combo with Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Liam O'Brien.
View: Avalanche Projected Lineup at Vegas

NOTEWORTHY

Nathan MacKinnon is on a 14-game point streak (nine goals, 16 assists), tying his career high and equaling the longest streak in the NHL this season as Carolina's Dougie Hamilton also had a 14-game run from Feb. 27-March 27. With a goal or assist, MacKinnon would be the first Avalanche player to record points in 15 straight games since Paul Stastny's 20-game run in 2006-07.
Gabriel Landeskog has four points (one goal, three assists) in his last three contests and Andre Burakovsky has five points (two goals, three assists) in his last three games. Both players are on three-game point streaks.
The Avalanche has 999 regular-season wins since moving to Denver for the 1995-96 campaign, owning an overall record of 999-726-101-142 record since relocating. Colorado looks to be the sixth team to reach 1000 wins in that time span, joining Detroit (1059), Dallas (1023), Pittsburgh (1021), Washington (1010) and St. Louis (1002).
Colorado is currently on a 22-5-3 run (47 points), matching the best 30-game stretch in franchise history (21-4-2-3 from Jan. 30-March 31, 2003).

ONE TIMERS

Defenseman Samuel Girard on bouncing back after the second COVID pause:
"We just have to be ready now. We don't have any excuses you know. We're playing against a good team tonight, and it's going to be two huge points."
Forward Carl Soderberg on looking at the standings:
"We're aware of the standings. We look at it after every game. I think all players do that, but at the same time I think we're more worried about our game than where we're going to be at after the game in the standings. We're going to come out and play our game and hopefully can get out with a win."
Head coach Jared Bednar on the mindset for tonight:
"We're putting a high importance on this game. We're fighting through some adversity here. So to me the most important thing, like we stressed from day one, is the habits and the process of us winning games, and how we approach it and the way we play. I think our commitment to defend has to be there, the competitiveness has to be there and our habits have to be right."