RALEIGH, N.C. — The Avalanche rudely welcomed back Calvin Pickard to its crease Tuesday night, playing cavalierly enough to subject the young goalie to a 20-shot barrage in the first period from the lowly Carolina Hurricanes.
Gee, candlesticks might have been a more fitting welcome-back gift, don’t you think?
The Avalanche eventually got going, coming back from a 2-0 deficit in the third period on goals by Matt Duchene and John Mitchell, and settled for the one point when Carolina won 3-2 in a shootout.
Pickard, recalled over the weekend from Lake Erie for his fourth stint of the season with the Avalanche, finished with 44 saves in the 65 minutes of regulation and overtime.
The Hurricanes scored on both their chances in the shootout, with Victor Rask and Elias Lindholm beating Pickard, while Nathan MacKinnon and Duchene couldn’t get the puck past Carolina backup goalie Anton Khudobin.
“He was phenomenal, especially in that first period,” Colorado coach Patrick Roy said of Pickard. “He was really good all night long. He made several good saves and kept us in the game in the first period.”
Colorado wasn’t getting much accomplished until Roy shook up the lines in the second period and the Avs put on more pressure the rest of the way.
“Like I said to the guys (in the locker room), I don’t think I’m going to re-watch that game because I’m afraid we might lose our point.”
Carolina’s 20 shots in the first period were the most for the Hurricanes in a period this season.
“The first period, I kind of got into a rhythm there, with all the shots,” Pickard said. “They were shooting from everywhere. Credit to the guys, going into the third on the road down 2-0, and we came back and scored a couple of big goals. It can go either way in the shootout, and they had a couple of nice goals there and their goalie made some nice saves. We’ll take the point. We would have liked two, but that’s the way it goes.”
Goals from Jordan Staal and Patrick Dwyer in the first 26 minutes gave the Hurricanes the 2-0 lead.
Duchene, by then centering Jarome Iginla and Alex Tanguay, made it close with his 12th goal of the season early in the third, and a strong individual play by Mitchell pulled the Avs into the 2-2 tie at 10:05. Mitchell brought the puck out of the Colorado end, broke down the right wing and then beat Khudobin from the circle for the unassisted goal.
“The top six together, they started to generate more offense again,” said Roy, who also switched to have Ryan O’Reilly between MacKinnon and Gabe Landeskog.
Duchene said disdainfully, “Our first period was terrible. … It’s a big point and ‘Picks’ came up big for us. We got a couple of key goals there in the third.”
Duchene said changing up the lines “kind of changes things up, but I think we were coming on even before that.”
Said Mitchell, who ended up centering Daniel Briere and Ben Street: “That first period is not how you want to start a game, giving up that many shots and that much zone time. That tires you out. Unfortunately, we had the start that we did and it set us back. We played better in the second and third period, but that’s been kind of the theme this year — 40 minutes here, 30 minutes here. We’ve really got to string 60 minutes together. We’ll do just fine if we can do that.”
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
