Avalanche players and coaches were beating themselves up after getting beat by the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday night.
Too many penalties and a soft game-winning goal led to a lot of head shaking and second-guessing in the losing locker room at the Pepsi Center.
Those aspects overshadowed Colorado’s comeback from a 3-0 deficit.
Coach Joel Quenneville didn’t like at least half of the 10 penalties the Avs committed or the late-game effort of goalie Jose Theodore.
Theodore (27 saves) allowed an unscreened Martin Lapointe wrist shot from atop the right circle to get by him – inside the far post, no less – to give the Blackhawks a 4-3 lead 5:26 into the third period.
“Tough one to give up,” Quenneville said of Lapointe’s second goal of the game.
“He’ll be better next time,” he said of Theodore, “but he had a tough night.”
Quenneville said the goal seemed to snatch the momentum away from the Avs, who tied it minutes earlier.
“We did a lot of good things at that stage of the game,” he said. “We didn’t generate a lot after it was 4-3.”
Theodore said he didn’t expect Lapointe to shoot from that distance.
“I thought he was going to walk in, but he beat me,” Theodore said in a statement. “Like I said, it’s a quick shot, but it’s no excuse. I should have had that.”
Footnotes
Avs forward Ian Laperriere blew one of the game’s best scoring chances in the first period when he came out of the box at the end of a 5-on-3 disadvantage and found himself on a breakaway. Laperriere took a neutral-zone pass from Joe Sakic but shot wide on goalie Nikolai Khabibulin. … Colorado owns the rights to University of Denver senior forward J.D. Corbin, who broke his right leg during practice Monday. The Littleton native was selected by the Avs in the eighth round of the 2004 draft.
