Eurolanche

Bolts return home to host Avs

Season series: The Colorado Avalanche split two one-goal games against the Tampa Bay Lightning last season. The Lightning won 3-2 in a shootout on Jan. 17 after Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon tied the game with 6.8 seconds left in regulation. MacKinnon scored a hat trick in the second game, a 5-4 win on Feb. 22.

Avalanche team scope: Coach Patrick Roy responded to a 4-1 loss to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday in the opener of a three-game road trip by canceling practice Wednesday in Tampa and making the morning skate on Thursday mandatory. It will be Colorado's first full-team morning skate of the season. "There's two ways to see things: A coach that might panic and say, 'We're skating today. We have to go on the ice. We have to do things,'" Roy told the Denver Post, adding that the morning skate will last 20-30 minutes, plus individual shooting. "But for me, I thought we played hard [Tuesday]." Semyon Varlamov will be back in goal after Reto Berra allowed four goals on 28 shots against the Panthers. Varlamov is 1-3-1 with a save percentage of .869.

Lightning team scope: Tampa Bay has gone back-to-back games without scoring a goal, its longest scoreless streak since the Nov. 29-Dec. 3, 2013. The Lightning are back home after a four-game road trip on which they went 1-1-2 and didn't score for the final 120:17. "I don't think there's any reason to panic with this group," center Steven Stamkos told the Tampa Bay Times. "We showed last year leading the League in goals, if we don't score for a couple games, everyone from the outside is thinking the world is crashing." Forward Brian Boyle has been scratched the past three games with a flare-up of an injury from last season's Stanley Cup Playoffs. "I thought it was under control. That's why it's pretty disappointing. Really disappointing. But these things happen," Boyle told the Times. Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, out since early September with a vascular problem that required surgery, was assigned to Syracuse of the American Hockey League on Wednesday for conditioning. He could return as early as Sunday, when the Lightning are at the Carolina Hurricanes in the second of back-to-back games.

-- by Kristen Nelson for NHL.com --