COLORADO SPRINGS — Seven preseason games, eight goals. The Avalanche is undoubtedly snake-bit offensively, but there’s a silver lining in everything and backup goalie Reto Berra continues to play extraordinarily well. He made 42 saves through regulation and OT and stopped his first four shots in the shootout.
“It’s tough. I hate to lose and I hate to especially lose in shootouts,” Berra told me “I don’t like that right now but, yeah, overall I played a good game.”
After Berra stopped Jeff Carter, Dwight King and Tyler Toffoli, Jarret Stoll, Dustin Brown and Jordan Neal put pucks past him in the shootout that went six rounds.
“He played really well,” Avs coach Patrick Roy said of Berra, who absorbed a 3-2 overtime loss at Montreal and a 2-0 (empty-net) setback at Calgary over the past week. “A lot of people had a question mark on him but I think he did exactly what he had to do to make make everybody comfortable and believe in him, and trust in him when Varly has to take a night off he’ll be able to give us some good hockey.”
Nathan MacKinnon went bar-down in the shootout in the fourth round and Gabe Landeskog also scored, in the fifth, with a slap shot from between the circles. Offensively, Roy noted the silver lining.
“Scoring those two goals in the shootout (might) have Nate and Landy and we’re going to have a great game in Vegas on Saturday night,” Roy said.
Alex Tanguay, Matt Duchene, Ryan O’Reilly and Daniel Briere failed to beat goalie Martin Jones in the shootout.
The Avs, who were outshot 43-34 and went 1-of-7 on the power play, are off to Las Vegas to play the Kings on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in the preseason finale for both teams.
Here were tonight’s lines and pairings:
O’Reilly-Duchene-Tanguay
Landeskog-MacKinnon-Briere
McLeod-Talbot-Cliche
Agozzino-Everberg-Rundulic
Stuart-Johnson
Holden-Barrie
Hejda-Guenin
Scratches (among those on the trip): F Iginla (ankle), D Wilson, D Redmond.
