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Tonight at the Pepsi Center, the Colorado Avalanche and Los Angeles Kings faceoff as the two Wildcard teams in the Western Conference. The Avalanche are one point up on the Kings for the top Wildcard spot, so a regulation win tonight would provide some much needed breathing room.
The Avalanche will look to continue their dominance at home while trying to avenge a 2-1 overtime loss to the Kings back in December.
With points in 14 of their last 16 games, Colorado’s fate is in their own hands. If they keep playing as well as they have, no one is going to catch them in the Wildcard race.
While the Avs top line has been on fire, they are going to be in tough against the Kings. Coach Bednar is going to have to do whatever he can to keep Nathan MacKinnon away from Anze Kopitar.
The Kings come to Denver with points in five of their last six games and are trying to keep pace with the Anaheim Ducks in the Pacific Division race.
Colorado Avalanche
Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen have been the two best players in the league this month. Over their ten games in March, both MacKinnon and Rantanen are averaging more than 2 points per game. A similar pace is going to have to continue because the rest of the forward hasn’t been providing much offense.
It was great to see Alex Kerfoot score a couple on Tuesday, let’s hope it’s the start of him breaking out of the funk he’s been in for the past six weeks.
While the forward group hasn’t been scoring, Tyson Barrie has been chipping in the necessary secondary offense. Barrie is on an 11-game point streak.
The Avs are likely to have Carl Soderberg back in the lineup after he missed the last game with an illness.
Projected Lineup
Gabriel Landeskog - Nathan MacKinnon - Mikko Rantanen
Tyson Jost - J.T. Compher - Sven Andrighetto
Matt Nieto - Carl Soderberg - Blake Comeau
Colin Wilson - Alexander Kerfoot - Gabriel Bourque
Nikita Zadorov - Tyson Barrie
Patrik Nemeth - Erik Johnson
Duncan Siemens - Samuel Girard
Los Angeles Kings
The Kings are coming off of a 2-1 overtime loss in Winnipeg Tuesday night and will be looking to grab two points in order to leapfrog Anaheim in the Pacific Division standings.
Like the Avalanche, the Kings are led by a superstar center. Anze Kopitar has 82 points in 72 and was able to carry a lot of the offensive load while Jeff Carter was injured for the first few months of the season. His next goal will be Kopitar’s 30th of the year - the first time hes’ done that since 2009-10 season.
Drew Doughty has been having another season that should put him in the Norris Trophy conversation. He will likely be glued to the MacKinnon line whenever possible.
Projected lineup:
Alex Iafallo - Anze Kopitar - Dustin Brown
Tanner Pearson - Jeff Carter - Adrian Kempe
Kyle Clifford - Nate Thompson - Tyler Toffoli
Tobias Rieder - Mike Amodio - Andy Andreoff
Derek Forbort - Drew Doughty
Dion Phaneuf - Alec Martinez
Jake Muzzin - Christian Folin
Starting Goalies
We are likely to see Semyon Varlamov make his 19th straight appearance for the Avalanche. He has been incredible lately - Varly has not allowed a third-period goal in his last 8 games. Regardless of how well he’s been playing, he’s going to need to get a little rest at some point right?
Varlamov is 22-14-6 on the season with a .919 sv%.
For the Kings, we are going to see Jonathan Quick. He is 29-25-2 on the season with a .921 sv%.