Dallas – The Avalanche on Saturday night began a testing stretch of the schedule that includes nine road games in a 10-game period and will go a long way in determining Colorado’s playoff seeding – or even whether it will make the postseason at all.
And the Avs began it with a loss.
Mike Modano, direct from his controversial tenure with the U.S. Olympic team, provided the spark for Dallas, getting two goals and an assist as the Pacific Division-leading Stars ended their losing streak at three games with a 5-3 victory over the Avalanche at the American Airlines Center.
After trailing 4-1, the Avalanche made it interesting with third-period power-play goals from Milan Hejduk and Rob Blake, but couldn’t come all the way back. And when Colorado defenseman John-Michael Liles went off for hooking with only 1:55 remaining, that eliminated the Avalanche’s chance to have six skaters on in the final minute. And Brenden Morrow’s power-play goal with 30 seconds remaining gave the Stars the final two-goal advantage.
“We battled back, but we weren’t very good tonight,” Avalanche coach Joel Quenne- ville said. “Halfway through that game, there wasn’t much promise to it. It was a hockey game right to the end, but we have to be better than that.”
The Avalanche began the night one point behind the Northwest Division’s co-leaders, Calgary and Vancouver. The Flames beat San Jose 2-0 later Saturday night, while the Canucks were idle. So Colorado could have taken over first place, even if only for a couple of hours, with a victory.
It could have been worse for the Avalanche in the sense that Marek Svatos played only one shift in the third period before leaving for the dressing room. He was bloodied and aching after he was hit from behind and took an inadvertent stick to the mouth from teammate Antti Laaksonen. But the rookie Slovak winger only suffered two chipped teeth and a cut lip.
The Avs had another nervous moment when Blake fell and crashed into the boards in the third period – on a play when Modano was called for tripping – and appeared groggy before getting up.
So the Avalanche at least seemed to come out of the loss without daunting injuries.
Blake was about to fire the puck around the boards when Modano reached in.
“It probably wasn’t even a penalty, to tell you the truth,” said Blake. “He just slipped in his stick when I went to shoot it around, but I was off-balance.”
Svatos’ puffy lip was highly noticeable afterward.
“I feel OK,” he said. “I’m missing a couple of pieces of my teeth, but other than that. …”
Svatos also was belted in an open-ice hit by Jason Arnott six minutes into the game and fell hard, and the play prompted Avalanche winger Ian Laperriere to go after Arnott and drop the gloves.
“It wasn’t really how he hit me,” Svatos said. “The worst part was when I landed on the ice. It hurt a little bit, but I hope I’m going to be OK.”
This was only Dallas’ second post-Olympic game, and its first at home. The Stars hadn’t won since beating Phoenix 5-1 on Feb. 9.
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
