Avalanche at Rangers preview

AVALANCHE (25-14-4) at RANGERS (19-18-4)
7:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN, SN360, SNE, SNO, NHL.TV

Shesterkin was recalled from Hartford of the American Hockey League on Monday, giving the Rangers three goalies including Henrik Lundqvist and Alexandar Georgiev. Lundqvist will be the backup to Shesterkin against Colorado. Georgiev will be a healthy scratch.
Shesterkin is 15-4-3 with a 1.93 goals-against average, .932 save percentage and three shutouts in 23 games with Hartford.
Nathan MacKinnon will play in his 500th NHL game, all with the Avalanche, who lost 1-0 to the New York Islanders at Nassau Coliseum on Monday. They are 4-6-1 in 11 games since Dec. 16.
The Rangers have lost three in a row, all on the road in regulation.

Players to watch

Avalanche forward Mikko Rantanen has five points (four goals, one assist) in his past four games, but he was held without a shot on goal against the Islanders.
Rangers forward Chris Kreider has 13 points (six goals, seven assists) in his past 13 games.

They said it

"The couple short losing streaks that we had I would say some of our defending details weren't good and that we weren't as committed as what we need to be on the defending side of things. But I think recently we played pretty well defensively, even [Monday night]. … We've got to take that into [Tuesday] and we've got to find our groove on the offensive side of things." -- Avalanche coach Jared Bednar
"[Shesterkin] has played his way into this opportunity. It has nothing to do with [Lundqvist] or [Georgiev]. Those guys have really given us a chance most nights. It's really more about Igor taking subjectivity out of it really. That's what you want all players to do." -- Rangers coach David Quinn

Avalanche projected lineup

Gabriel Landeskog -- Nathan MacKinnon -- Joonas Donskoi
Andre Burakovsky -- J.T. Compher -- Mikko Rantanen
Matt Calvert -- Nazem Kadri -- Valeri Nichushkin
Matt Nieto -- Pierre-Edouard Bellemare -- Tyson Jost
Ryan Graves -- Cale Makar
Samuel Girard -- Erik Johnson
Ian Cole -- Nikita Zadorov
Philipp Grubauer
Pavel Francouz
Scratched:Mark Barberio, Vladislav Kamenev
Injured:Colin Wilson (lower body)

Rangers projected lineup

Chris Kreider -- Mika Zibanejad -- Pavel Buchnevich
Artemi Panarin -- Ryan Strome -- Jesper Fast
Brett Howden -- Filip Chytil -- Kaapo Kakko
Steven Fogarty -- Greg McKegg -- Brendan Smith
Brady Skjei -- Jacob Trouba
Marc Staal -- Tony DeAngelo
Ryan Lindgren -- Adam Fox
Igor Shesterkin
Henrik Lundqvist
Scratched: Micheal Haley, Alexandar Georgiev
Injured:Libor Hajek (knee), Brendan Lemieux (hand)

Status report

Neither team held a morning skate.

Stat pack

MacKinnon will become the sixth Avalanche draft pick (since 1995-96) to play in 500 games with Colorado, joining Landeskog (606), Alex Tanguay (598), Matt Duchene (586), Paul Stastny (538) and John- Michael Liles (523). … Panarin has no points in each of his past two games. It's the third time this season he has gone two straight games without a point. He has not gone three in a row.