Calgary – The lease on first place turned out to be of the one-day variety, like the young tenant whose security-deposit check failed to clear the bank.
The Avalanche occupied first place in the Northwest Division for about 30 hours, having fallen to second Monday night after a 4-3 loss to the Calgary Flames at the Pengrowth Saddledome.
Thoroughly outplayed much of the first two periods, the Avs nearly came back from a three-goal, third-period deficit. If not for a couple of excellent saves by Calgary goalie Miikka Kip- rusoff, Colorado might have snuck out with at least a point on a night when such an accomplishment seemed hopeless.
“I was very upset with the way we began. We were under siege there in the first period,” Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville said. “It was a great comeback, but I wasn’t pleased with how we played in the first half of the game. We talked about our response right off the get-go and knowing the importance of the game.
“You knew how they were going to be prepared and ready to go, and we didn’t match their intensity, and that was the difference.”
Jarome Iginla scored twice for Calgary, including on a 5-on-3 power-play goal early in the second period for a 3-0 lead. The goal came with Colorado’s two top penalty-killing forwards – Ian Laperriere and Antti Laaksonen – in the box, indicative of the kind of night it was for the visitors through two periods.
After goals by Joe Sakic and Milan Hejduk in the first 10 minutes of the third period, however, the Avs were back in it. Hejduk made it 3-2 with his 20th goal of the season, and Colorado carried the play the next couple of minutes. But Kiprusoff made big stops on Rob Blake and Pierre Turgeon to keep Calgary in front.
With time becoming a factor, Calgary’s Chuck Kobasew scored what proved the game-winner with 3:54 left, with Colorado’s fourth line on the ice. Alex Tanguay made it 4-3 with 1:25 remaining after a pretty assist by Blake, but the Avs could do no more.
“We let them off the hook at the start,” Tanguay said. “We gave them breaks, and it cost us the game. We had a solid third period, but in the first period we were a little shaky. It’s like we didn’t want the puck, and you can’t do that when a team is that aggressive.”
The tone was set early, as Calgary was the far more aggressive team in the game’s first few shifts. If not for a couple of shots that hit posts, the Flames would have had a bigger lead than 2-0 after 20 minutes. Iginla and Bryan Marchment scored for Calgary, with Marchment’s seeing-eye shot from the blue line eluding Avs goalie Peter Budaj (26 saves) for his first goal of the season. It was a bit of a soft goal, the kind Budaj had not allowed in his first two starts after his ascension to the No. 1 goalie job in the wake of David Aebischer’s trade to Montreal for the injured Jose Theodore.
“We were just too slow at the start,” Blake said. “You get down three goals to a team like that, it’s going to be tough to get back into it. We had a good third period, but you can’t give them that kind of start. They had a couple of bounces, but their bounces were related to hard work.”
Staff writer Adrian Dater can be reached at 303-820-5454 or adater@denverpost.com.
