DALLAS — The scoresheet said they surrendered three power-play goals, but essentially, it was really four that the Avalanche allowed to the Dallas Stars on Friday night in a 7-6 overtime defeat.
After jumping out to a 2-0 first-period lead, the Avs landed in the penalty box four times in the second period, and the Stars capitalized on three of them, as Loui Eriksson, Sheldon Souray and Alex Goligoski all scored with the man-advantage to give Dallas a 4-2 lead.
“We have to be better on the penalty kill, there’s no question,” Avs coach Joe Sacco said. “First of all, we start with some bad penalties, penalties at the wrong time in the course of the game.
“We played a really good first period. We come out and take two penalties, pretty much in the offensive zone, in the second period, and they end up in the back of your net. And we have to do a better job of finding pucks. We have to be willing to sacrifice the body and block shots and help our goaltender out in those situations.”
Another goal by Eric Nystrom in the third period, which tied the game 5-5, came exactly two minutes after Ryan O’Byrne was whistled for cross-checking and was not officially listed as an extra-man goal.
Footnotes.
While Milan Hej- duk did not register a point, he was a plus-2 and fired a game-high six shots on goal. . . . Kyle Quincy’s first-period assist gave him nine points (two goals, seven assists) in his last nine games. The defenseman also logged a season-high 26:59 of ice time. . . . Coincidental minor penalties to Daniel Winnik and Dallas’ Trevor Daley with 1:11 left in regulation carried over to overtime, which left the clubs skating 3-on-3 for the first 49 seconds of OT. “I’ve seen it before, but you don’t see it too often,” Sacco said of the rare occurrence. “It’s an exciting part of the game.”
