"It should be a real one fun one because there is a lot on the line for both teams," said Avs head coach Jared Bednar following morning skate. "It's the last week of the season, so teams are dialing in for the playoffs."
Colorado has a one-point lead and a game in hand on Arizona for the second wild-card spot in the West and is coming off a 3-2 shootout win on Friday against the Coyotes. Arizona bounced back on Sunday afternoon with a 4-0 victory at home versus the Minnesota Wild.
The Avalanche is on a seven-game point streak (6-0-1) and has a 13-5-2 record in its last 20 contests.
"We got to just keep doing what we're doing. Take every game as an opportunity to play very well and to get better and put a great product out on the ice," said Colorado defenseman Ian Cole. "I think we can't look too far in the future, and we certainly can't look in the past. We're still not out of the woods as far as the playoffs go; everyone in this room knows it is still a tight race."
The Blues clinched their berth into the NHL's second season on Friday, but they aren't on cruise control in the final days of the 2018-19 campaign. The club has 92 points and can still win the Central Division with four games remaining. The Blues are two points behind the current division-leader Winnipeg Jets and second-place Nashville Predators, both of whom have 94 points, and have played one fewer game than the Preds.
St. Louis is just the seventh team in the NHL's expansion era to reach the postseason after ranking in last place at any point following New Year's Day (minimum 20 games), and it is the first club to do it since the 1996-97 Ottawa Senators. The Blues were ranked 31st in the league on Jan. 2 with a 15-18-4 record (34 points) but have since gone 27-10-4 (58 points).
"They're playing really good hockey right now," Bednar said of the Avalanche's opponent. "They have contributions from everyone in their lineup. I like their depth and their size, and their ability to hang onto pucks. On the flip side of that, I think we got to use our speed and our quickness to be tough to play against tonight."
St. Louis has won each of the first three games of the season series, although two of them came in overtime. The Blues tallied first in each contest, but the Avalanche has done a better job in that department as of late and the results have followed.
Colorado has scored the first goal in eight straight outings (6-1-1 record) and in nine of its last 10 contests (7-1-1). Overall, the Avalanche is 28-5-6 (.718) this year when finding twine first.
"When you have to score goals and playing from behind, you open yourself to counterattacks and those sort of things," Cole said. "When you're ahead, you don't need to do that and you can kind of do the opposite where you can still play a tight structure and still get those counterattack opportunities because of your tight, defensive structure.
"It is definitely something we wanted to focus on with our starts and have better starts. Not necessarily scoring goals, but establishing ourselves and establishing our game and we've done that."
Colorado aims to continue that trend this evening at Enterprise Center that begins a stretch of four games in six days.
"I'm sure they want home-ice advantage, and maybe throughout the first three rounds. It's going to be a good test," said Avs veteran forward Matt Calvert. "They're obviously on home ice, so we got to come out hard."
