Tick. Tick. Tick. As the NHL regular season dwindles to its final 24 games, the Avalanche better not blow it.
Is time running out on Colorado coach Joel Quenneville?
His contract with the team expires this year.
While Quenneville has held the Avs together through uneven goaltending and frustrating injuries, he also has watched home-ice advantage melt away to the point where Colorado could slip up and miss the playoffs.
The NHL coach stands tall on the bench, an easy target for fingers pointed in blame when the Colorado power play stinks or the Avalanche suffers through a stretch when only three of 10 games are won at the Pepsi Center.
In an embarrassing 4-1 loss to St. Louis that had the Avs seeing red on Valentine’s Day, the visiting Blues broke hearts with two quick goals in the opening period, and a sad Thursday night ended with players fleeing the Colorado locker room as if leaving the scene of a bad blind date.
“We probably got away from the way we’ve been playing,” Avalanche veteran Andrew Brunette said. “We opened up and tried to make too many plays in the neutral zone, and that killed us.”
Hired on the eve of the infamous NHL lockout in 2004, Quenneville is completing his third season of hockey for the Avs. He already has the distinction of being the lone coach since the team came to town in 1995 to miss the playoffs.
Falling short of the playoffs again would be a very unhealthy habit for a coach of a franchise that bravely insists that anything less than a championship is a failure.
If you’re asking me, Quenneville has done good work, refusing to let a beat-up team surrender, forcing the Avs to play the down-and-dirty hockey an undermanned squad must play merely to survive.
But life in the NHL ain’t fair. And there’s no doubt where fans direct their anger when Colorado loses, and that’s why Quenneville can lose the public’s faith much quicker than captain Joe Sakic or rising star Paul Stastny.
Since Jan. 1, Colorado owns an unremarkable 3-5-2 record in the Pepsi Center. That’s no way to keep the paying customers coming back. Peter Forsberg isn’t coming through that door, and even if he did, how long would it be before he was limping on a bad ankle?
A crummy eight points added to their total in Western Conference standings during the past 10 games at home? At that rate, the Avs will find themselves with noses pressed against the glass, on the outside looking in, when the playoffs begin.
“Points are at a premium, so we focus on playing well everywhere, and we’re certainly disappointed with our record during the last stretch at home,” Quenneville said.
Avalanche general manager Francois Giguere conducts his job with the patience of an accountant, making sure everything adds up before making any decision that shakes up the franchise.
It’s a sharp contrast to the passionate and bullish management style of predecessor Pierre Lacroix, who made bold trades, kicked up dust and worried about how it all settled later.
The combination of a 15-2-2 finish a year ago and the addition of Ryan Smyth and Scott Hannan made everyone in Denver believe that the Stanley Cup was again within reach of the Avalanche.
Everybody will forgive Sakic and Stastny for being injured.
But the time for pity is long gone. “We don’t have that many games left,” Avs forward Ian Laperriere said.
The pressure is squarely on Quenneville, who gets no excuses.
Fair or not, he is a scapegoat waiting to happen.
So, like it or not, Giguere has two choices.
The Avalanche can give Quenne- ville a contract extension now to end the uncertainty.
Or Colorado can let the final 24 games of the season hang like a big question mark over the job security of Coach Q.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
