RALEIGH, N.C. — Marek Svatos has two assists for the Avalanche in 41 games this season. Wayne Gretzky’s single-season NHL record of 163 appears in no danger from the Slovakian right winger.
But while the assists are a team low for any Avs forward with more than 25 games, Svatos’ 19 goals are better than anybody, and he got two big ones Saturday night at the RBC Arena.
Svatos’ two goals 2 minutes and 7 seconds apart in the third period were the difference in Colorado’s 5-4 comeback victory over the Carolina Hurricanes before 18,680 fans.
Poking home the rebound of a mishandled Tyler Arnason shot past Carolina goalie Cam Ward with 4:03 left in the game, Svatos and the Avs completed a comeback after trailing by scores of 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2 — the latter score with the clock winding down to less than 10 minutes left.
“We finally got a couple bounces at the end,” said Svatos, who scored the game-winner in the Avs’ only other win in the previous seven days. “We just kept playing for a full 60 minutes, even though we kept getting behind. We didn’t quit.”
It might have been easy to do for a lesser-spirited team. The Avs came in losers of six of the past seven games, including two tough one-goal defeats to begin their road trip. It looked like another just-good-enough-to-lose effort in this one, as Ward frustrated the Avs for the first 50 minutes with many good saves, and Colorado kept giving back two-goal deficits when they got closer twice earlier.
But the comeback began with 9:37 left, when rookie Cody McLeod kept hacking away at a puck in the crease, finally lifting it over Ward’s left pad. Svatos tied it with 6:10 left, finishing off the first of two Arnason assists with a rooftop wrister from the slot.
“(Svatos) loves that front of the net and scoring goals there. He doesn’t need much room to get the puck in,” Avs coach Joel Quenneville said. “We were scrappy around the net. We had more tenacity in that area. We scored those ugly goals. We try to keep reinforcing to the guys that this is a process, that we have to play (hard) in order to have success, and tonight they were going in for it.”
Jose Theodore allowed perhaps a couple of spotty goals — including a short-side slapper to Cory Stillman with 6:21 left in the second period that made it 4-2 — but he finished with 30 saves overall and had to stop some tough ones late in the game.
The Avs nearly gave a point away at the end, when a too-many-men infraction gave Carolina a 6-on-4 for the final 39 seconds.
“Tonight, I wasn’t seeing the puck as good as the last couple of games. But I just wanted to keep making the next save after we got behind 4-2 and try to keep giving my teammates a chance,” Theodore said. “It was a big win to come back like that, on the road. We kept putting pressure on (Ward) and finally got rewarded.”
Svatos was diving toward the net when Ward mishandled Arnason’s shot from the side, and jabbed the puck home while falling to the ice.
“The puck was right there. I just wanted to get to it first, before the goalie,” Svatos said. “It looked good when I saw it going in.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com
