Dallas – The NHL trading deadline is two weeks from Tuesday, when the Avalanche still will have 19 games remaining in the 2006-07 season. Yet the way this is going, Colorado for the first time might be in position to be a seller, rather than a buyer – or renter – as the deadline approaches.
A seller, as in looking ahead to next season and beyond, and not to a playoff run. A seller, as in: “What’ll ya give us for …?”
Getting off to what recently has been its typical lethargic start, the Avalanche opened its road-dominated stretch run with a strange, wild and at least entertaining 7-5 loss to the Dallas Stars on Sunday afternoon at the American Airlines Center.
“Games like that make coaches’ hair go gray, but we’ll take the two points and move on,” Dallas coach Dave Tippett said.
Colorado, which fell behind 4-1 and 6-3 before having three power-play chances in the final 12 minutes to pull into a 6-6 tie, remained 10 points out of the last playoff spot in the Western Conference.
How bizarre was the nationally televised Colorado loss?
Both starting goaltenders – Colorado’s Peter Budaj and Dallas’ Marty Turco – were pulled. Budaj, who allowed four goals on only 15 shots, for the most part was hung out to dry by sloppy and cavalier work in front of him before Jose Theodore came on at the six-minute mark of the second period.
“You look at the ones he let in, I don’t think he had a chance on any of them,” Colorado coach Joel Quenneville said. “They didn’t have many other scoring chances, but the ones they had were very high quality.”
Said Budaj: “You win as a team and you lose as a team. We’re in a position where we can’t lose games. Today, we battled back hard, but we didn’t play the whole 60 minutes, and I think that’s what killed us.
“It’s disappointing because we knew how big this game was, and how big every single game is going to be from now on. We can’t let the points slip like this. We have to have a sense of urgency and desperation in our game. If we play like we’re playing right now, we’re not going to make the playoffs. We have to turn around and play the game we were playing at the beginning of the 2007 year (6-2-1).”
Turco exited after Wojtek Wolski’s 19th goal of the season at 9:43 of the second period got Colorado within 4-3. Milan Hejduk and Brett McLean had back-to-back goals in the first 4:19 of the third period to pull the Avs within 6-5, but they couldn’t get the tying score. Mike Smith finished with 12 saves in the third period, and Jeff Halpern’s goal with 2:28 remaining gave Dallas some breathing room.
“We certainly played a real good third period and got ourselves back into it,” Quenneville said. “But we’re certainly not happy with the way we started a game – again.”
Joe Sakic had the Avalanche’s first goal, and it brought him to within two of becoming the 17th player in NHL history to reach 600 career goals.
