While losing is never a positive outcome, the Avalanche continue to control their playoff destiny with 11 regular-season games remaining.

Dropping a 4-2 decision Friday to Nashville, the best team in the NHL at the moment with 104 points, really won't affect their postseason chances if they take care of Detroit on Sunday at the Pepsi Center.

The Avalanche got a little breathing room after getting road wins in Minnesota and St. Louis in the two previous games.

Colorado still holds the first wild card playoff position in the Western Conference and can strengthen it with a win against a Red Wings team that has lost nine games in a row (0-8-1) and is out of the race in the East.

Sunday's game won't exactly invoke memories of the old days when the Avalanche and Wings were waging a fierce rivalry while competing for the Stanley Cup.

Now, this is one the Avalanche can ill afford to lose, especially at home where they've gone 14-2-1 in the past 17 games; they must take advantage of home ice against a team that hasn't won since Feb. 25 against the New York Rangers.

The Avalanche are tied with Dallas with 84 points but have played one fewer game and have more regulation and overtime wins (37-34).

Semyon Varlamov will be in goal again, for the 17th consecutive game (15th start), but coach Jared Bednar said Friday night -- the Avalanche didn't practice Saturday -- that Jonathan Bernier and Erik Johnson could be returning as early as this coming week.

"Berns is getting better," Bednar said. "I don't have an exact timeline on him yet, but the near future hopefully as long as he doesn't have any setbacks. Same thing with EJ. We're going to sit down and we're going to talk to try and get a plan for him and figure out what he's thinking when he can come back. We'll know more probably Sunday."

Bernier has missed three games with a concussion, Johnson 13 games with an upper-body injury believed to be a shoulder.

Varlamov, meantime, said he feels fine physically and is enjoying the heavy workload.

"I feel good," he said. "That is what we train for in the summer time and all year long, to play every other day. I'm feeling pretty good right now."

Bednar said he just wants to make sure that Varlamov gets enough time to rest and recharge between games. He won't practice much, instead work with goalie coach Jussi Parkkila on the side.

"I don't want to practice him if he's going to play every second day," he said. "We're in a stretch right now, Sunday (it'll be) four games in six days, we have to be careful there. But as long as we're not practicing him, I'd like to see him stay sharp and go out and do a little work with Jussi and get off the ice after 15 minutes.

"Then we'll figure out who else is healthy enough to go into the net for practice and just make sure he's ready for games until we know we have two goalies, and then he'll be able to get a break every once in a while with Berns coming back."

In other words, Spencer Martin shouldn't hold his breath waiting for his first appearance of the season.

*****

Nathan MacKinnon scored his 36th goal Friday and has 21 points (11 goals, 10 assists) in an 11-game point streak. It's his longest streak since his rookie season in 2013-14 when he had a point in 13 consecutive games.

Tyson Barrie had an assist to stretch his streak to nine games, tying Kevin Shattenkirk (Nov. 19-Dec. 4, 2010) and John-Michael Liles (Oct. 7-26, 2010) for the longest by a Colorado defenseman. Barrie has 12 points (four goals, eight assists) in his streak.

Mikko Rantanen had an assist, giving him 11 points (three goals, eight assists) in a five-game streak.



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