Avs continue losing ways in 5-1 beatdown in Anaheim

HIGHLIGHTS

GAME RUNDOWN

The 30th-place Colorado Avalanche lived up to their billing again tonight as they returned from the All-Star break on the road against the Anaheim Ducks and picked up the losing right where they had left it. The scoring started early in the first period when Jakob Silfverberg scored a power play goal on a great redirection in front halfway through the opening frame. The power play goal was highlighted even more when Colorado failed to capitalize on any of their three first-period power plays and the Ducks maintained their 1-0 lead into the second period.

Anaheim continued building their lead as they cycled and passed the puck around a helpless Avalanche defense and Rickard Rakell tapped home an easy goal to make it 2-0 just 2:54 into the period and setting up the Avalanche to have to come back from a multi-goal deficit, a situation that has been nothing short of impossible for this year’s Avalanche squad.

Colorado did muster some life, though, as Mikhail Grigorenko made a great play in the neutral zone to chip the puck ahead to Mikko Rantanen, who broke in all alone and beat goaltender John Gibson high on the glove side, making it 2-1 not even halfway through the game and providing poor Avalanche fans with a glimmer of hope on this night.

That hope was quickly extinguished in the third period when Nathan MacKinnon barely missed the game-tying goal in the final frame’s opening moments and just a few seconds later the Ducks burned the Avalanche in transition as defenseman Francois Beauchemin was unable to get back and cover his man properly. Unfortunately for Colorado, that man was Silfverberg again and he simply deked Avs goaltender Calvin Pickard out of the building and buried an easy one for the 3-1 lead and the ultimate dagger.

Anaheim wasn’t quite finished as the always-generous Avalanche allowed Korbinian Holzer to notch his first goal of the season on a weak wrist shot from the blueline that Pickard appeared to see all the way but reacted to so poorly he was unable to get in front of it in time just like that it was 4-1, Anaheim. A Cam Fowler goal in the waning moments of the game was simply salt in the wound for the NHL’s worst team and the Ducks walked away with a 5-1 victory.

THREE STARS

1. Jakob Silfverberg
2. John Gibson
3. Korbinian Holzer

BY THE NUMBERS

WHAT’S NEXT

Colorado turns around and wraps up the California portion of their schedule tomorrow night in Los Angeles against the Kings.