Morning skate notebook: Yak is back

Greetings from the media room of the Pepsi Center, where the Avalanche will host the white-hot Tampa Bay Lightning at 7 p.m. I’m hearing it’ll be a good crowd tonight, so plan ahead.

The only lineup news is this: Nail Yakupov is back in, and Gabriel Bourque is back out. For Yak, it’ll be his first game since Dec. 5, against Buffalo. He was a healthy scratch for some of the time, and was out sick for part of the time.

Jared Bednar said he will use 11 forwards and seven defensemen again. Bednar said this kind of lineup will stay this way until, essentially, the team plays its way out of it. Ergo: If it stops “working” well enough in his mind, he’s sticking with it.

Personally, I like the system. I like that the D are fresher and that Bednar can essentially bench one of the D-men if they aren’t going well in a game, and play another guy more. I also like the fact that Nathan MacKinnon gets to play more under this system, double-shifting at times.

Jonathan Bernier will be in goal for the Avs. The Lightning don’t announce their starting goalie until game time, but inside word around the team this morning is that Peter Budaj is likely to get another start against his former team. We’ll see.

Bednar, when asked what makes playing the Lightning tough right now, said “Everything.” They are really on a roll right now and Avs fans should brace themselves for what this team is like. They’re fast, skilled and good at both ends of the ice.

So these look like the lines and D pairs for Colorado:

Landeskog-MacKinnon-Rantanen

Wilson-Compher-Jost

Nieto-Soderberg-Comeau

Andrighetto-Yakupov

Defense

Zadorov-Johnson

Nemeth-Barrie

Lindholm-Barberio

Girard

Goalie

Bernier

Varlamov