Avalanche at Golden Knights preview

AVALANCHE (41-26-8) at GOLDEN KNIGHTS (47-21-7)
10 p.m. ET; ATTSN-RM, ALT, SNP, SNO, SNE, SN1, NHL.TV

The Golden Knights can also get in if the Los Angeles Kings lose to the Calgary Flames in any fashion. They begin a four-game homestand with a six-point lead over the San Jose Sharks in the Pacific Division.
Vegas and Colorado are playing the second half of a home-and-home series. The Avalanche defeated the Golden Knights 2-1 in a shootout at Pepsi Center on Saturday.
Colorado, 9-2-3 in its past 14 games, leads the St. Louis Blues by one point for the first wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference and trails the Minnesota Wild by three points for third place in the Central Division.

Players to watch

Avalanche forward Gabriel Landeskog is expected to play in his 500th NHL game. He will become the first player from the 2011 NHL Draft to reach the milestone.
Golden Knights forward Jonathan Marchessault is on a four-game point streak (two goals, two assists) after going scoreless the previous seven games.

They said it

"The game that we're playing is the biggest game of the year now, and it's going to continue to be like that until the season is over." -- Avalanche coach Jared Bednar
"From the first day, we talked about everyone having a good year. If you have a good year, we'll be in the running. We never talked about playoffs. We still don't. We worry about the next two points." -- Golden Knights coach Gerard Gallant

Avalanche projected lineup

Gabriel Landeskog -- Nathan MacKinnon -- Mikko Rantanen
Tyson Jost -- J.T. Compher -- Sven Andrighetto
Matt Nieto -- Carl Soderberg -- Blake Comeau
Colin Wilson -- Alex Kerfoot -- Gabriel Bourque
Patrik Nemeth -- Erik Johnson
Nikita Zadorov -- Tyson Barrie
Anton Lindholm -- Samuel Girard
Semyon Varlamov
Jonathan Bernier
Scratched:Mark Alt, Vladislav Kamenev, David Warsofsky, Duncan Siemens, Dominic Toninato, Nail Yakupov
Injured:Mark Barberio (upper body), Andrew Hammond (concussion)

Golden Knights projected lineup

Jonathan Marchessault -- William Karlsson -- Tomas Tatar
David Perron -- Erik Haula -- James Neal
Ryan Carpenter -- Cody Eakin -- Alex Tuch
Tomas Nosek -- Pierre-Edouard Bellemare -- Ryan Reaves
Brayden McNabb -- Nate Schmidt
Shea Theodore -- Deryk Engelland
Colin Miller -- Jon Merrill
Marc-Andre Fleury
Malcolm Subban
Scratched:Zach Whitecloud, Oscar Lindberg, Brad Hunt
Injured:Reilly Smith (upper body), William Carrier (upper body), Luca Sbisa (upper body)

Status report

Engelland could return to the lineup after being scratched Saturday.

Stat pack

MacKinnon has 27 points (13 goals, 14 assists) in his past 15 games and is two points from 300 in the NHL … Fleury is one win from tying Grant Fuhr (403) for 11th on the League's all-time wins list.