TAMPA, Fla. — The Avalanche is two wins away from hoist­ing the Stan­ley Cup for the third time and pre­vent­ing the Tam­pa Bay Light­ning from win­ning their third con­sec­u­tive. The Stan­ley Cup Final moves to Amalie Are­na for Games 3 and 4. Here’s five things to watch for Monday’s Game 3.

Keep the com­po­sure. Tam­pa Bay is the two-time defend­ing Stan­ley Cup cham­pi­on. It’s a deserv­ing­ly proud orga­ni­za­tion that won’t back down. But if the Light­ning begins to break — see Game 2’s 7–0 loss — they will get chip­py. We saw that late in Game 2 when Tampa’s Erik Cer­nak began a big scrum against the boards that led to a com­bined 15 minor penalties.

The Light­ning won’t go down with­out a fight. So the Avs want to under­stand that and try to stay as dis­ci­plined as pos­si­ble. They need to remain tough between whis­tles but skate away from the fire­works dur­ing stoppages.

That iden­ti­ty. The Avalanche doesn’t want to change a thing. It has outscored the Light­ning 11–3 and out­shot them 68–39. Col­orado has dom­i­nat­ed pos­ses­sion time in both games because it has played its style. The Avs’ zone exits have been clean, they’ve had lit­tle prob­lems advanc­ing through the neu­tral zone and set­ting up the attack. When they do play the inevitable dump and chance at times, the forecheck has been strong and has forced turnovers.

The one ele­ment that sup­ports all those things is speed. The Avs have played fast — a tor­rid pace that begins with the high­ly skilled defense­men mak­ing clean pass­es or skat­ing the puck up ice on their own.

Hun­gry like Helm. Col­orado cen­ter Dar­ren Helm is a fan favorite in this series because he plays his rel­a­tive­ly obscure role with extreme pas­sion. He’s a check­ing machine. He had 10 hits in Game 1 and 12 in Game 2, in which he also had a goal. His 22 hits in the series are most by a mile. No oth­er play­er on either team has reached 10 in one game. Helm is a leader, a 2008 Stan­ley Cup cham­pi­on with Detroit, and a big rea­son Col­orado is tough enough to hoist it for the first time in 21 years.

Helm’s play seems nat­u­ral­ly inspires his team­mates to do the same — to stick to their roles and hold noth­ing back.

Spread­ing the wealth. The Avalanche had five play­ers score a goal and 11 pro­duce a point in Game 2. Yes, it was a blowout and it prob­a­bly won’t unfold again in this series. But Col­orado has con­fi­dence and it needs to con­tin­ue to trust and feed off that. There is so much more offen­sive fire­pow­er behind the top for­wards of Nathan MacK­in­non, Mikko Ranta­nen and Valeri Nichushkin. And there is so much speed on every line and defen­sive pair­ing. If every­one chips in col­lec­tive­ly, this train can’t be stopped. If the Avs can again get goals from guys like Helm and defense­man Josh Man­son they are bound to take a 3–0 series lead into Wednesday’s Game 4.

Two-minute game. The Avs have dom­i­nat­ed spe­cial teams thus far in the series, going 3‑for‑8 on the pow­er play and 5‑for‑5 on the penal­ty kill. What­ev­er team wins that com­par­i­son in Game 3 will prob­a­bly win the game — although Col­orado has already proved it is bet­ter at even-strength. Avalanche coach Jared Bed­nar dubs the pow­er play and penal­ty kill the “two-minute game.” But when his team has the man-advan­tage, he wants to short­en that stretch by scor­ing a goal. Bed­nar can thank gen­er­al man­ag­er Joe Sakic and his staff for the four trade-dead­line addi­tions who each have strength­ened spe­cial teams. For­ward Art­turi Lehko­nen is now on the No. 1 pow­er play and for­wards Andrew Cogliano and Nico Sturm and defense­man Man­son are reg­u­lars on the PK.