Round Robin Projected Lineup: Avalanche vs. Golden Knights

The Colorado Avalanche takes on the Vegas Golden Knights this afternoon at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta, in the team's final round-robin matchup of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers.

Both teams are 2-0-0 so far during the qualifying stage of the postseason, and the winner of the 1 p.m. MT game will earn the top seed for the Western Conference playoffs and play the No. 12-seed Chicago Blackhawks in a first-round series. The second-place club will then face the No. 11-seed Arizona Coyotes.

Head coach Jared Bednar did not give any roster details following Friday's practice, so his exact lineup won't be known until closer to game time. He did say however that all of his players are healthy and available to play.

Colorado has divided its starting goaltenders through the first two round-robin games, with Philipp Grubauer making 31 saves in a 2-1 victory over the St. Louis Blues last Sunday and Pavel Francouz stopping all 27 shots in a 4-0 shutout of the Dallas Stars on Wednesday. The only difference in the team's skaters for those two contests was that Tyson Jost played on the fourth line for the outing versus St. Louis before Matt Nieto took that spot for the matchup against Dallas.

Below is the Avalanche's projected lineup for today's outing versus the Golden Knights. The forward combinations and defensive pairings are based from the team's last game and are subject to change.

Forwards
90 Vladislav Namestnikov - 29 Nathan MacKinnon - 96 Mikko Rantanen
92 Gabriel Landeskog - 91 Nazem Kadri - 13 Valeri Nichushkin
95 Andre Burakovsky - 37 J.T. Compher - 72 Joonas Donskoi
83 Matt Nieto OR 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
31 Philipp Grubauer OR 39 Pavel Francouz