Colorado will continue to work on sharpening the rough edges of its game against the last-place team in the Eastern Conference.

While the Colorado Avalanche matchup with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday night is not expected to be a playoff-type game, the Avs will continue to work on the details of their game ahead of the postseason.

"I think there's still little details we can get better at, you know, nitpicking is probably the right word. Some stuff in the video that you might not do earlier in the year because there's bigger things and so many games but now the games start to matter even more," Mikko Rantanen told The Hockey News' Colleen Flynn after morning skate. "If you want to win you got to get everything in order — all the little things like details, coming back to our D-zone and stuff like that because those are going to matter in a seven-game series against a good team so it could be one bad change and it's the series, so yeah, those are the things that we talk about." 

The Avalanche are tied with the Winnipeg Jets for the top spot in the Central Division with 93 points and a .674 points percentage. The Blue Jackets sit in the basement of the Eastern Conference with 58 points. This is the first matchup between the two teams this season and they face each other again in Columbus on April 1. 

Although Colorado has fared better at home, the four straight wins on the road showed the team can be successful in other buildings — which is important as it gets closer to playoff time. 

"Vancouver, you know tough building to play in — Edmonton, you know really good team, playing two really good hockey teams there," Andrew Cogliano told Flynn. "And even Calgary and going and playing in St. Louis — just good hockey teams that are fighting for a playoff spot, so they're desperate teams. But at the end of the day that's four big wins. We got to be better on the road in order to go far in the playoffs, to have success you got to be a good road team. It's a good time to pick it up there now." 

Head coach Jared Bednar said the Edmonton Oilers game was near perfect and the closest to a playoff game against a highly-skilled team the Avs have played all season. But he is not expecting his team to play the remaining 13 games at that same level. 

"I don't know if it's realistic — we got to play like we did against Edmonton every game the rest of the year, but we certainly want to try to be as close to that as possible and possibly even better than that," Bednar said. 

Projected lineup

Alexandar Georgiev was in the starter's net for morning skate indicating he will guard the net against the Blue Jackets. Justus Annunen played against the St. Louis Blues so the Bulgaria native has had nearly a week's rest ahead of this match up. 

Valeri Nichushkin — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Artturi Lehkonen — Casey Mittelstadt — Jonathan Drouin
Brandon Duhaime — Ross Colton — Zach Parise
Miles Wood — Andrew Cogliano — Yakov Trenin

Devon Toews — Cale Makar
Samuel Girard — Josh Manson
Jack Johnson — Sean Walker

Alexandar Georgiev
Justus Annunen

The puck drops at 7 p.m. at Ball Arena where Nathan MacKinnon will look to extend his home point scoring streak to 33 games. 

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