The Avalanche face the Blackhawks in Chicago on Sunday night after offcially moving into the second wild card spot in the Western Conference following Nashville's 4-0 loss Saturday night in Arizona.
Here are the GAME NOTES.
The Avalanche (21-18-3) and Predators (19-16-7) each have 45 points, but Colorado has a four-game lead in regulation and overtime wins (21-17), the first tiebreaker now that the teams have played an equal number of games.
#Avs Haven't seen this in a while. Forty games left to pick up more ground. #Avalanche pic.twitter.com/vkQoQwzGoy
— Rick Sadowski (@RickS7) January 10, 2016The Avalanche have gained 11 points on the Predators since Nov. 30. Colorado had a 9-14-1 record at the time (19 points) while Nashville was 13-7-4 (30 points). The Avalanche have gone 12-4-2 (26 points) since then, the Predators 6-9-3 (15 points).
Colorado has a 9-2-1 record against Central Division teams, with a 1-0-1 record against the Blackhawks.
Chicago (26-13-4) has outscored teams 23-12 in a six-game winning streak that included a 4-3 overtime win in Denver on New Year's Eve.
Goalie Semyon Varlamov has had uncanny success against the Blackhawks. He's won five consecutive games at the United Center with a 0.99 goals-against average and .975 save percentage. He's gone 8-0-1 in his past nine games overall against Chicago with a 1.48 average and .961 save percentage.
Corey Crawford is expected to start in goal for the Blackhawks. He's won four games in a row but hasn't fared so well against the Avalanche. He has a 4-9-2 career record against them with a 3.02 average and .883 save percentage.