Avalanche at Rangers preview

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.