Anaheim, Calif. – The next time the Avalanche plays, the Tuesday afternoon NHL trading deadline will have come and gone.
With Colorado coming off back-to-back disheartening defeats in Southern California – the second a 5-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday night – the issue becomes how different, if at all, the locker- room population will look after the deadline.
Avalanche captain Joe Sakic, who had his 27th goal of the season in the loss that kept Colorado 10 points out of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, even was able to muster a bit of dark humor when asked if he might be dealt to a playoff-bound team, perhaps as a rental-type player, before he again would be eligible for unrestricted free agency July 1.
“Me?” he asked.
Well, yeah.
“I’ve never thought of being a rental player myself,” he said. “So, no. … No, I’m staying put.”
The backdrop was a game that was mildly reminiscent of the Avalanche’s 6-5 Saturday shootout loss at Los Angeles, where the Kings got Rob Blake’s overtime-forcing goal with 3.9 seconds to go in the third period.
As they had at Los Angeles, the Avs fell behind 2-0 and battled back. This time, after Mark Rycroft got his first goal since Dec. 19 and Sakic scored, Milan Hejduk’s power-play goal with 5:07 remaining in the third tied it 3-3. But the Ducks struck for the clinching goals by their dynamic defensemen – Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger – in the final four minutes.
Niedermayer’s was inadvertently redirected in by Avalanche defenseman Brett Clark, and then Pronger’s drive from the blue line beat Jose Theodore, who finished the night with 36 saves in his first start in four games.
“It’s a similar story to what we’ve seen over and over again,” Avalanche coach Joel Quenne- ville said. “Back-to-back like this is tough. We battled like crazy again tonight, and got ourselves right there with five minutes to go, and don’t get it to overtime. We do a lot of good things. It’s the things we have to try and prevent, something we’ve been stressing and trying to work on. That’s the fun part of the game, five minutes to go.”
Sakic said the Avs “have 19 games to go, and we have to play. You look at the standings, you look where we’re at, and it’s an uphill battle. I’m not going to lie to you about it. We have to go on a serious run.”
Veteran winger Andrew Brunette said the Avs “still have fight left. I think that’s evident in the games we’ve played. Yeah, we’ve made mistakes and things happen. It’s not a lack of effort or thinking we’re out of it. We’re competing hard. Maybe not always smart, but hard. I think we’ve been doing that for the last little while, and the results aren’t there.
“It’s been devastating, really. Every night, we seem to find a different way to hurt ourselves. Each loss seems to be tougher and tougher to take.”
Brunette added, “I’ve been on other teams that have been out of it by now and don’t compete. We’re trying our butts off here to try and win hockey games, but it seems every night, there’s a different kind of breakdown.”
Staff writer Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
