Bye bye win streak.
Yes, the way things have gone for the Avalanche, winning one qualifies as a streak.
Returning from their five-day bye, the Avs fell 4-1 to the on Thursday night at the . Rickard Rakell had a goal and an assist for the Ducks, who won for the fifth time in their last six, and goalie John Gibson had 33 saves.
Colorado went into the break off a 2-1 overtime win over the last week, ending 10-game home and five-game overall losing skids, but things were back to what passes for normal with this team against the Ducks.
Colorado now is 13-26-1 overall, one game short of the halfway point, and 5-14-1 at home.
“Hey, listen, staying positive is important, but we still have to call it what it is,” Avalanche coach said. “We have to evaluate the game and approach our team accordingly. There were 13 minutes (in the first period) where we got outworked and outbattled, and that cost us the game.
“There’s certain things that we haven’t done every game going through the first half of the season and one is that when we get down, we’ve had a tendency to pack it in. I don’t want to see that in the second half. Those things like that annoy me. We have to keep fighting and trying to get better through the second period to the third. We had a stint there in the first and then we got better in the second and third. But we have to eliminate those gaps in our game.”
, who scored the game-winning overtime goal against the Islanders and Tuesday was named Colorado’s representative on the Central Division team for the Jan. 29 All-Star Game, had the Avalanche’s only score against the Ducks, beating Gibson with a backhander on a breakaway to tie the game 1-1 at 5:24 of the first period.
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But the tied lasted only 51 seconds and Rakell’s 17th goal of the season gave the Ducks the lead for good.
made his first start in the Avalanche net since Dec. 22 after recovering from groin muscle problems, and he allowed three goals on 31 shots.
The Avalanche’s power play, 28th in the 30-team league, again had an unproductive night, going 0-for-3 against the Ducks.
“The biggest thing that stands out for me is that we get a chance or two chances, Grade A chances with guys walking down the slot, we miss the net both times,” Bednar said. “(Nikita) Zadorov and MacKinnon. You’re trying to earn a couple of chances on the power play, quality scoring chances, and it doesn’t come easy for us. But when we get there, we miss the net. That’s the difference.”
Said MacKinnon, who finished with six shots on goal: “I hit the post, and just an inch to the right, it’s different. Obviously, we need to be better. We’re close to the bottom of the league, like we are in other categories, but the power play is one thing we can control. We have to be better there, for sure.”
Zadorov has played a larger role on the power play since the loss of Erik Johnson to a broken fibula. Among the defensemen, Tyson Barrie was on for 3:36 of the Avalanche’s six minutes with the man advantage, Zadorov 2:28 among his total ice time of 19:27.
“The reason we gave them that game was because of the power play,” said the 21-year-old Russian. “We had opportunities, we had a few shots, we had a few chances. We just need to bear down. The third period wasn’t good, the two power plays we had then, we couldn’t get in the zone pretty much. But we need to start 5-on-5, and start to play hard and don’t give up those easy goals like we did today.
“This is tough. I’ve been in this situation before in Buffalo. We just need to stay together and stay positive as much as we can.”
Gabe Landeskog had five of the Avalanche’s shots, but was kept off the scoresheet.
“They were opportunistic,” he said of the Ducks. “We know they have firepower and they can score goals, and that’s what they did in the first — get two chances and score two goals. Then they kept playing off of that. I thought our second period and third period was real strong. I think offensively, we had some things to build off of. We were getting our defensemen involved and we had some good looks.”
The power play, Landeskog said, “definitely wasn’t good enough. It’s a rhythm thing, a chemistry thing, which I think we have. We’ve kept the units together for a while now and it feels like we’re finding each other and we know what we’re looking for. . . It’s a one-goal hockey game in the second period and we get a chance on the power play, and if we get one there, that’s what you need from your power play. Your power play can spark your team and we didn’t do that.”
Centering the second line, Matt Duchene had only 16:39 of ice time, two minutes under his average, and one shot on goal. He hasn’t scored in the past five games and has one goal in the last 12.
The game was firewagon hockey early, with three goals in the first 6:15.
Keeping the puck on a 2-on-1, Ducks winger Jakob Silfverberg beat Varlamov from the right circle to open the scoring at 3:52.
The Avalanche pulled even on MacKinnon’s goal, but the Ducks were back in the lead less than a minute later, when Rakell’s shot from the top of the circle got past a screened Varlamov to the far side. And it was 3-1 at 6:03 of the second, when Varlamov made the save on Shea Theodore’s wraparound, but lost sight of the puck, which was sitting just to the goalie’s left when the Ducks’ Ryan Kesler tapped it in.
Corey Perry’s empty netter at 18:24 of the third gave the Ducks the final three-goal edge.
The Avalanche continues the four-game homestand against the on Saturday afternoon.
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