Colorado @ Tampa Bay preview

Last Meeting ( Oct 24, 2018 ) Tampa Bay 1, Colorado 0

The two highest-scoring teams in the league managed one goal in their last meeting and round two could be much different when the Colorado Avalanche visit the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night. The Lightning (3.83 goals per game) earned a 1-0 victory in an up-and-down battle at Colorado (3.69) on Oct. 24 for their fourth straight win in the series and take a five-game winning streak overall into the showdown.

Andrei Vasilevskiy made 22 saves in the first meeting, but is out with a foot injury and Louis Domingue has stepped in to win nine of his 12 starts since after turning aside 33 shots in the 3-2 win over Boston on Thursday. “(Domingue) played well tonight,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper told reporters of Domingue, who allowed three goals combined in his last two starts. “He stood tall for us in the last eight minutes of that second period when we were pretty careless with the puck.” The Avalanche rebounded from their first regulation loss in 12 games by scoring three unanswered goals in the third period of a 5-2 win at Florida on Thursday, improving to 11-5-2 on the road after finishing 15-19-7 away from home in 2017-18. “It’s just the hunger and the will to succeed from our guys,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar told reporters. “Maybe our expectations (last season) weren’t high enough on the road and I think this year we’re trying to take the next step and continue what we’ve been doing at home.”

TV: 7 p.m. ET, Altitude (Colorado), FS Sun (Tampa Bay)

ABOUT THE AVALANCHE (17-7-5): Bednar split up his top line for the third period and J.T. Compher took advantage with the go-ahead goal while playing with captain Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon. “I felt like our top guys were struggling to gain traction,” Bednar told reporters. “. … I thought maybe I flip them (and) sometimes you can get a spark, and if I didn’t like it I could just move it back real quick.” NHL leading scorer Mikko Rantanen had a goal with the top unit before being switched with Compher for the final 20 minutes and boasts a career-best 10-game point streak (five goals, 13 assists).

ABOUT THE LIGHTNING (22-7-1): Forward Mathieu Joseph has four goals in the last four games to push his total to nine on the season, tied for second in the league among rookies entering Friday. “He’s playing great,” Tampa Bay center Anthony Cirelli told reporters of Joseph, who led AHL Syracuse in scoring last season. “You can just tell with his speed and the way that he moves and his hands kind of keep up with him.” Right wing Nikita Kucherov leads the team with 43 points - 25 in the last 12 games - and center Brayden Point has 12 goals in the same span to tie for the league lead through Thursday with 21.

OVERTIME

1. Colorado C Carl Soderberg has three goals in the last two games to become the fourth player on the team in double digits with 11.

2. Cirelli’s second short-handed goal of the season was the game winner Thursday and the 21-year-old owns a plus-18 rating in his first 48 NHL regular-season games.

3. Avalanche D Tyson Barrie recorded 10 points (four goals) in his last 10 contests, sandwiching a four-game absence because of injury.

PREDICTION: Lightning 4, Avalanche 3