Lightning Provides Good Test For Avalanche

Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar summed up the challenges that the Tampa Bay Lightning possess in one word.
"Everything," Bednar said following the team's morning skate on Saturday. "Lowest goals against, most goals for, great power play--got to stay disciplined. Four-line team that comes at you with their lines and their D jumping into the play. They're a lot to handle."
The Lightning will provide a good test for a young Avalanche team as Colorado plays host this evening at Pepsi Center, but the NHL's best team isn't unbeatable.

"We got to be patient, but the one thing we got to keep in mind for us is that we can't give them too much respect," Bednar said. "We got to know our opponent, which we do. We know they're dangerous, and we got to try and go out there and be the aggressors. For us, if we're sitting back and playing on our heels, it doesn't usually turn out well. It doesn't matter who we are playing."

Tampa Bay took the first matchup of the season 10 days ago in Florida, but the Avalanche played well and controlled the pace for parts of that game.
Colorado jumped out to a 1-0 lead just 1:21 after the opening faceoff, but Tampa Bay responded 25 seconds later. The score was tied 2-2 at the end of the first period, before the Lightning pulled away in the final 40 minutes with three straights tallies to pick up the 5-2 victory.
"I think it was just a few mental lapses that we had," said Avs forward Colin Wilson. "Leaving guys out front by themselves. It is something we can easily clean up with a little communication while at the same time keeping them in their zone for longer. It takes away from their offense."

Two areas the Avalanche looks to remedy in its game is defending on the rush back into its own zone and coverage once there. According to Bednar, Colorado struggled to do that against Tampa and on Thursday in a 2-1 win over the Florida Panthers.
"We had some breakdowns on the defensive side of it that we wanted to address, especially tracking back through the neutral zone and arriving in D-zone coverage," Bednar said. "Making sure we're taking care of the trailers because we had trouble with Tampa, too. Pulling up in the offensive zone and finding late guys. I would say that was the main thing this morning. Make sure we're taking care of the rush and making we're finding out guys coming back into D-zone coverage."
While the Avalanche doesn't have eight players like the Lightning has with 20 or more points already this season, including two with over 40 in Nikita Kucherov (44) and Steven Stamkos (43), the team is confident it can match and slow down the league's best-scoring squad.

The recipe for success for the Avs is the same as it was in the last meeting versus the Bolts, get on the scoreboard first.
"We want to get out to a good start at home," said defenseman Tyson Barrie. "That has obviously been a benchmark for us in the first two months of the season. We got to continue that. Obviously they have the firepower over there that they can get one, two, three quick, but we got to believe in ourselves that we can shut that down."
Since losing to Tampa, Colorado is 3-1-0 with two wins over the Panthers and another over the defending-Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. It appears as if the Avs are trending in the right direction up the Western Conference standings, and they're aiming to continue that.
"We're looking to play more good games than bad," Barrie said. "If you do that, then you should be rewarded on most nights. I find it evens itself out. If we keep playing well and stay within our systems, I think we'll be on the right end of it."

YAK'S BACK

Nail Yakupov will be back in the Avalanche lineup tonight after being out for the past five games. He missed two of those contests because he was sick.
The right wing finally got healthy prior to the last outing against the Florida Panthers, but since he hadn't skated for four days, head coach Jared Bednar said it would be good if he got some practice time in before returning to game action.
Yakupov will likely be on a line on Saturday night with rookie Tyson Jost. Colorado will once again use a non-conventional lineup of 11 forwards and seven defensemen, and the team will rotate and double shift some of its top-nine skaters on the bottom trio. It will be the sixth straight game the Avs have used the alignment.
Jonathan Bernier will get the start in net for the Avalanche after stopping 39 shots in his last outing on Monday at the Pittsburgh Penguins. He is 4-2-2 with a 2.24 goals-against average and .929 save percentage in eight career games against the Lightning.

PROJECTED LINEUP

Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen
Sven Andrighetto - J.T. Compher - Colin Wilson
Blake Comeau - Carl Soderberg - Matt Nieto
Tyson Jost - Nail Yakupov
Nikita Zadorov - Erik Johnson
Patrik Nemeth - Tyson Barrie
Anton Lindholm - Mark Barberio
Samuel Girard
Jonathan Bernier
Semyon Varlamov