Dallas – The Avalanche pulled off a tough feat Monday night in Dallas: It chased the opposing goaltender, the Stars’ Marty Turco, in the first seven minutes, and still lost.
Colorado has had a host of problems in its mediocre-at-best start this season, but closing the deal is at the head of the list.
This time, the Avalanche saw leads of 2-0 and 4-3 disappear as Dallas came back for the 5-4 victory at the American Airlines Center, ruining Colorado’s hopes of winning all three games on the road trip.
Breaking down the slot on an odd-man rush, Eric Lindros converted a pass from Mike Modano to get his fifth goal of the season to tie the game at 11:40 of the third, and then Antti Miettinen finally got a shot off out of a protracted scramble in the slot at 13:58 to beat Avalanche goalie Peter Budaj and put the Stars in the lead for good.
Budaj, getting his third consecutive start, allowed the five goals on 31 shots and was off the form he had displayed in the victories at Columbus and Minnesota to open the trip. The loss dropped the Avalanche back below .500, at 9-10-2, and represented a failed chance to leap over third-place Calgary and Vancouver in the Northwest Division.
“We were trying to get some momentum here,” Colorado coach Joel Quenneville said. “We just keep hanging around here. It’s like good, bad, and we’d like to start feeling better about ourselves in games like this.
“This game’s got to get to overtime. Or if we have a lead like that late, we have to find a way to seal it. In other losses, we were kind of like chasing it, coming from behind, but we have to find a way to close it out.”
Budaj said: “Obviously, you don’t want to let in five goals. You want to let in a max three goals a game, but that didn’t happen tonight. Hopefully, I’m going to learn from that, work hard and see what I did wrong and learn from the game.”
The Avalanche seemed in control after Marek Svatos scored twice in the first 6:51 to make it 2-0. At that point, Colorado had only five shots on Turco, who was making his third start in four nights, and Stars coach Dave Tippett had seen enough. He yanked Turco for the unheralded Mike Smith, 24, who had played in only three previous games, albeit posting impressive numbers – a 1.34 goals-against average and a .951 save percentage.
Dallas was back in a 2-2 tie by the end of the first period on two goals by captain Brenden Morrow, who eventually left the game for good in the second period with a tweaked groin muscle. After Sergei Zubov’s shot from the point at 2:19 of the second beat Budaj to make it 3-2, the Avalanche regained the lead on Milan Hejduk’s eighth goal of the season and John-Michael Liles’ drive with the Avalanche on a 5-on-3 power play only 41 seconds into the third period.
But it didn’t hold up.
“Especially against teams like that, with a lot of firepower, we need to keep it a lot simpler in the third period,” Avalanche captain Joe Sakic said.
Lindros, Dallas’ offseason free-agent signee, said the Stars “turned on our jets when Smitty came in. We didn’t play well in front of Marty and it took time to really buckle down.”
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
