Preview: Avs look to bounce back against the Bolts

SB Nation

After a quick back-to-back on Halloween Weekend, the Colorado Avalanche are back home tonight to take on the Tampa Bay Lightning. This past back-to-back, the Avs secured a total of three out of four points,

winning against the Vegas Golden Knights and losing in overtime against the San Jose Sharks. This will be the first of two regular-season matchups between these two teams. Will the Avalanche secure another regulation win, or will Tampa steal one in Denver?

Colorado Avalanche: 7-1-5

The Opponent: Tampa Bay Lightning 6-4-2

Time: 7:30 p.m. MT

Watch: Altitude, Altitude+, TNT, truTV, HBOMax

Listen: Altitude Sports Radio, 92.5 FM

Colorado Avalanche

As previously mentioned, Colorado plays in Denver tonight after coming home from a little road trip out west, of sorts. They earned a total of three out of four points on that back-to-back, which isn’t bad at all. The Avs also got some reinforcements, as Mackenzie Blackwood played his first game of the season for Colorado against the San Jose Sharks after coming off an injury. We should see Blackwood again tonight, as it’s important to get Blackwood back up to speed.

We also saw young Taylor Makar join his brother with the Avalanche against the San Jose Sharks, but the Avalanche reassigned him on Sunday and have since called up Jack Ahcan and Tristen Nielsen. Nielsen just inked a new deal with the Avalanche, so it will be good to see him get some NHL action so quickly. The Taylor Makar game felt more like a birthday present to Cale than an honest look at the kid. It’s all just tinkering until LOC and Sam Girard return, which is looking like sometime this month.

Projected Lineup

Artturi Lehkonen — Nathan MacKinnon — Martin Necas
Ross Colton — Brock Nelson — Valeri Nichushkin
Gabriel Landeskog — Jack Drury — Victor Olofsson
Tristen Nielsen — Zakhar Bardakov — Parker Kelly

Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Josh Manson — Brent Burns
Ilya Solovyov — Sam Malinski

MacKenzie Blackwood
Scott Wedgewood

Note: I am assuming that Nielsen will slot in, but I’m not sure if Solovyov could still get the nod, given that Achan also got the call-up.

Tampa Bay Lightning

The Lightning are a bit of an anomaly, as they haven’t received the stellar goaltending they are accustomed to from Andrei Vasilevskiy, on top of lacking the scoring touch. They are 26th in the league in terms of goals for, and Vasilevskiy sits at an .899 SV%, which is well below his career .916 SV%. Let’s see if the Avalanche can solve Andrei early and get things rolling in the right direction.

As usual, keep an eye on tonight’s top line matchups with Hagel, Point & Kucherov vs. Lehkonen, MacKinnon and Necas. Kucherov and MacKinnon are perennial MVP runners, and although they may have different approaches, they are both plenty successful.