Avs Host Golden Knights in Meeting of Wests' Best

A little past the midway point of the season, the Colorado Avalanche finds itself in a position to take over the top spot in the West Division.
The second-place Avs are 20-8-3 with 43 points in the standings and trail the leading Vegas Golden Knights by two points entering the two-game set between the clubs tonight and Saturday at Ball Arena. The Knights are 22-7-1 so far this year and have played one less game.
"I think you are fighting for home ice and playoff position and all that kind of thing, it's the second half of the season now. It's just another test against a real good hockey team," said head coach Jared Bednar. "This is a very good hockey team over there. They are a deep group, forwards and D, they are getting great goaltending, good special teams. They don't have a lot of weaknesses in their game, so it's going to come down to competitiveness, detail, execution and discipline and we've been good in all those areas here recently and we are certainly going to have to bring our best game here tonight for Vegas."

Statistically, the Avalanche and Golden Knights are very similar up to this point. Vegas has scored 100 goals this year and allowed 66 while Colorado has tallied 106 times but allowed the opposition to score 70 times.
When looking at special-teams stats, the Avalanche has a slight edge. The Avs have scored on the power play 87.4 percent of the time while killing off 23.4 percent of their penalties, and Vegas has found success on 84.4 percent of its man-advantage situations and is killing penalties at a 19.2-percent clip.
"We are going to have to play our best game. We know how good they are, and we are fighting for the first position in the division," said defenseman Samuel Girard. "We are just going to have to be ready for tonight and play our game, make sure we play 60 minutes as well."
The Avs are 18-3-1 when scoring first, tied with the Knights for the most wins in the NHL when tallying the opening goal. That trend was proven true in each of the first four meetings between the clubs this year as the team that hit twine first ended up being victorious in those matchups.
Colorado and Vegas faced off four consecutive times from Feb. 14-22, as the Knights were the first opponent to ever face the Avalanche/Nordiques in four straight games in the regular season. Each team went 2-2-0 in the stretch.
"It will be a nice feather in our cap to be able to pass them here and get ahead of them. There's lots of hockey left to play," Bednar said of the standings race. "It is the biggest two-game set that we've had so far because it's the most recent one and the latest one. The four-game set against them around the outdoor game was important. Our guys started playing real well after that and put ourselves in a position to catch Minny in a two-game set, which was an important series. We did that and now we are moving on."
Colorado is on an eight-game point streak, going 7-0-1 over that stretch, while Vegas is 6-1-0 in its last seven games. Each team has 17 regulation wins on the season.
"Everyone knows where we're at in the standings and both teams are playing well against other opposing teams, so this series is huge to try and gain some more points on them," said Logan O'Connor. "We've been playing well lately as have they so these are big points coming up here the next two games that we really need."

LINEUP NOTES

Rookie defenseman Bowen Byram will be back in the lineup after missing Tuesday's game with a lower-body injury, replacing Dan Renouf as one of Colorado's six D-men.
J.T. Compher will also be back in the lineup and is set to skate on the fourth line with Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Logan O'Connor. Matt Calvert will be out, but he did participate in Colorado's morning skate today.
"He's dealing with some nagging injuries," head coach Jared Bednar said of Calvert. "I've said it before, we are going to need our lineup, all these guys. We've got hard decisions to make up front and if a guy is not at his best then we have to go with the healthy, rested guys."
Philipp Grubauer is expected to get the start in net. He ranks first in the NHL in shutouts (five) and goals-against average (1.71), is second in wins (19) and third in save percentage (.930). He played in his 200th NHL game on Monday against the Arizona Coyotes and tonight will be his 100th game as a member of the Avalanche.
View: Avalanche vs. Golden Knights Projected Lineup

NOTEWORTHY

The Avs are the only NHL team to rank among the top three in both goals per game (3.42, second) and goals-against per game (2.26, third).
Colorado has scored at least one goal in 20 consecutive periods, a new franchise record (not including overtime).
The Avalanche has scored six-plus goals five times this year, tied for the most of any team (Edmonton), and is the only NHL club to score eight or more goals twice.
Colorado's top line of Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen has combined for 27 points (10 goals, 17 assists) and a plus-19 rating in the last four contests.
MacKinnon (five goals, eight assists) and Rantanen (seven goals, six assists) both have seven-game point streaks, while Landeskog has a six-game run (three goals, eight assists). Landeskog has a helper in each of his last six outings, the longest assist streak of his career.
Rantanen has a five-game goal streak (six goals), one shy of his career high set earlier this season. He is the first Colorado player with two, five-game goal streaks in a season since Milan Hejduk in 2002-03.