The Vegas Golden Knights and Colorado Avalanche will battle for the No. 1 seed in the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference when they play their final game of the round-robin portion of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers at Rogers Place in Edmonton, the Western hub city, on Saturday.
Vegas defeated the Dallas Stars 5-3 on Monday and the St. Louis Blues 6-4 on Thursday. Colorado defeated St. Louis 2-1 on Aug. 2 and Dallas 4-0 on Wednesday.
The Avalanche won both regular-season games against the Golden Knights, 6-1 on Oct. 25 and 7-3 on Dec. 23.
Here are 3 keys to the round-robin game:
1. Goaltending matchup
Vegas coach Peter DeBoer and Colorado coach Jared Bednar haven't named a starter, but each has alternated his goalies thus far in the round-robin. If that trend continues, Robin Lehner will start for the Golden Knights and Philipp Grubauer will be in goal for the Avalanche.
Lehner started Vegas' first game of the round-robin and made 24 saves against the Stars. Marc-Andre Fleury struggled for the Golden Knights despite earning the win against St. Louis, allowing four goals on 17 shots.
Grubauer, who missed the final 13 games of the regular season with a lower-body injury, made 31 saves for Colorado in the win against St. Louis. Pavel Francouz earned a shutout in his NHL postseason debut by making 27 saves against Dallas.
"Our team is following their lead," he said. "Those guys are dialed up right now. They're focused, they want to win. Every night they're pushing it to try and win hockey games. When you play an 82-game season, you're going to have ups and downs, and right now there's a raised urgency."
Kadri has the only goal among those four forwards, scoring on a power play with 0.1 seconds left in regulation to defeat St. Louis. MacKinnon, a Hart Trophy finalist as League MVP, has two assists and 11 shots in two games.
3. Depth
Led by Alex Tuch and Shea Theodore, who each scored two goals, 11 players had at least one point for Vegas against the Blues on Thursday. The Golden Knights have scored 11 goals in two round-robin games, including seven in the third period, without leading scorer Max Pacioretty, who sustained a minor injury in training camp and hasn't practiced since July 20.
"We're deep," said forward Mark Stone, who has four points (two goals, two assists). "We're deep at defense, we're deep at forward, we're deep at goal. We know there's going to be guys contributing at different times."
DeBoer said Pacioretty is closer to returning. "I said he was on the horizon last time we talked about him, and he's closer than that this time." … Jost or Nieto will be on Colorado's fourth line.
