What was shaping up to be a measuring-stick match has taken the form of a winnable game for the Kings when they host the Colorado Avalanche this afternoon. It’ll be the first time the Kings welcome the Avalanche, who have the NHL’s second-best points percentage since Feb. 23, this season after losing to them in Denver on Nov. 13 and March 27 by an aggregate score of 8-2.

The Kings mustered no goals and two goals, respectively, in those affairs, falling short of the magic number, three, that has earned them a 38-0-2 mark this season.

“They’re really fast,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “We’ve had a tough time with them in their building. Dangerous power play. They’ve got (Cale) Makar of course, one of the elite defensemen in the league, (Nathan) MacKinnon, it goes on and on.

“They’ve got a lot of offensive firepower. They’ll challenge us defensively and we’ve got to find a way to get three (goals).”

Yet Colorado will have neither MacKinnon nor Makar nor Jonathan Drouin nor Josh Manson nor Ross Colton and might miss other regulars today. MacKinnon snapped his string of 209 consecutive games played, missing Thursday’s loss to Vancouver despite sitting atop the scoring leaderboard, tied with Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov.

MacKinnon was “dealing with something,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar told reporters. “I don’t think that individual accolades (matter to him). They’re nice, but he’s won a lot of them. His trophy case is huge.”

“Winning has always been the most important thing to him. Having accomplished that in 2022, I think he got a taste for it, and he wants to win again.”

That season, not only did MacKinnon lift the Cup, but he did so alongside captain Gabriel Landeskog, who has undergone multiple knee surgeries since and has not played since that Stanley Cup Final. Landeskog was set to make his long-awaited return to pro competition in an American Hockey League game against the Henderson Silver Nights on Friday.

Another key figure for the Avalanche that season was the man between the pipes, Darcy Kuemper, who’s now in his second stint with the Kings, who hope he’ll be quaffing bubbly of a different brand this June. For now, his sights are set on another game with two or fewer goals allowed.

One more would tie Miikka Kiprusoff’s expansion-era record, 16 straight in 2003-04, the year Kiprusoff backstopped Darryl Sutter’s Calgary Flames all the way to Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final.

“(Kuemper) started the season, he had two stretches where he had injuries. He was solid at the beginning of the season, he had the injuries and came back,” Hiller said. “Once he came back from the second injury, since then, if he’s had a bad game, I don’t remember it. He’s just been there every night, so that’s pretty consistent.”

Kuemper turned in another solid performance in a 6-1 win over the Ducks on Thursday.

For the Kings, a franchise record in points would require them collecting seven of a possible eight in their last four games.