With a vic­to­ry on Fri­day night at Ball Are­na, the Avalanche will win the Stan­ley Cup for the third time and pre­vent the Tam­pa Bay Light­ning from a three-peat.

Five things to watch for Game 5

1) Close it out at home. The Avalanche haven’t closed out a play­off series at home since 2008. They can win the Stan­ley Cup in front of the bur­gundy-and-blue faith­ful at Ball Are­na for Denver’s biggest hock­ey cel­e­bra­tion since 2001.

“It’s going to be great,” Avalanche coach Jared Bed­nar said Thurs­day morn­ing at the Tam­pa air­port. “We try all sea­son long to get home-ice advan­tage and we came in and got a  split in Tam­pa, played bet­ter the sec­ond night than we did in the first. Our guys will be excit­ed. Our guys are excit­ed and should be play­ing with des­per­a­tion. It should be a great hock­ey game.”

2) Bolts of Light­ning. Tam­pa Bay won twice in the first round against Toron­to when fac­ing an elim­i­na­tion game and the Light­ning trailed the New York Rangers 2–0 in the East­ern Con­fer­ence finals. The Bolts don’t back down.

“Just focus on one game. We can. We have to go win a game,” Light­ning for­ward Pat Maroon said. “Right now our focus is Game 5, and we have to go win. I mean, there’s noth­ing (else) real­ly we can do.”

3) Stay in the moment. Col­orado doesn’t want to get away with what has worked. The Avs are 15–3 in the post­sea­son and a 16–3 fin­ish would be the sec­ond-best since the NHL went to a best-of-sev­en, four-round for­mat in the 1980s. The 1988 Edmon­ton Oil­ers hold the record of 16–2. The Avs’ pre­vi­ous Cup-win­ning runs end­ed 16–6 in 1996 and 16–7 in 2001.

“It helps us stay in the moment and focus on the things that we can con­trol and to me, that’s the process of what makes us suc­cess­ful,” Bed­nar said. “Our prepa­ra­tion, our break­ing the game down into five-minute incre­ments so we’re sharp and doing what we need to do to have suc­cess. That’s our process for suc­cess so far this sea­son and we’re not going to change it now.”

4) Play fast. The Avalanche outscored the Light­ning 11–3 in sweep­ing Games 1 and 2 in Den­ver. Col­orado played fast — faster than it did in Tam­pa because of dete­ri­o­rat­ing ice con­di­tions there. Because the Avs are the faster team in this series, expect the Ball Are­na ice crew to make sure the con­di­tions favor the home team.

“We have a great oppor­tu­ni­ty here to clinch some­thing great for the team, but at the end of the day, we have to focus on our­selves and play our game and then wher­ev­er that takes us, it takes us,” Avs defense­man Cale Makar said. “We have a lot of faith and a lot of belief in the boys and there’s def­i­nite­ly no waver­ing con­fi­dence in our room.”

5) Be spe­cial in rare times. The Avalanche is on fire on spe­cial teams in this series, going 6‑of-13 on the pow­er play and killing off 13 of 14 short­hand­ed sit­u­a­tions. But penal­ties are less fre­quent­ly called as the series goes on and both teams must rec­og­nize that they will have to fight through non-calls and focus on how they play at even strength.

“It’s play­off hock­ey. Stan­ley Cup Finals. You’re expect­ed as play­ers to fight through a cer­tain amount of stuff, because it’s the most com­pet­i­tive time of the year,” Bed­nar said. “The refs aren’t going to call the ticky-tack stuff that puts teams down and gives them the oth­er team an advan­tage. They’re going to let the play­ers set­tle the game. That’s the way it should be.”