Avs waste big chance to tighten grip on playoff spot with flatline effort in L.A.

LOS ANGELES – When the St. Louis Blues lost earlier in the evening, it presented great opportunity for the Colorado Avalanche. Go out and find a way to beat the Los Angeles Kings, and a playoff spot would suddenly go from the longshot it seemed like just a few days ago to a sure shot entering the final few days of the season.

But, of course, that didn’t happen. Nothing easy happens in hockey, especially for the Avs, and so it’s on to home stretch with their fans more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The Avs left the Staples Center here without the two points that would have given them a three-point edge on the Blues for the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference. As it stands, Colorado has just a one-point lead still, and the Blues have a game in hand. They have three games left in the season – home against Chicago Wednesday, on the road in Chicago Friday and on the road at the Pepsi Center Saturday.

The Avs have just two games left – on the road in San Jose Thursday and against those Blues Saturday at home. A win, a precious win Monday night here, and the Avs could have gone into that Thursday game safe in the knowledge they’d still be in a playoff spot after the game with the Sharks.

But the Avs gave a mostly dreadful performance against the Kings, especially their top line of Nathan MacKinnon, Gabe Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen. The Avs just are not a deep enough team to overcome it when their top three scorers can’t get anything on the scoresheet, and that’s the biggest reason why they lost this one. MacKinnon went a seventh straight game without a goal, the puck looked like a grenade on Landeskog’s stick all night and Rantanen looks gassed suddenly when the team needs him the most.

It also didn’t help that goalie Jonathan Bernier just, well, didn’t have it in this one. He gave up a bad-bounce, fluky goal to Torrey Mitchell at the 9:29 mark of the first, a short-handed goal from long distance to Dustin Brown at the 12:32 mark and – with Colorado a goal away from being even in the third – a wraparound goal to Dustin Clifford.

The Clifford goal came after Avs D-man David Warsofsky made a foolish pinch in the Kings’ zone, lost the puck and was too slow on the backcheck to get a stick on Clifford’s wraparound. Bernier was slow moving side-to-side as well. The bottom line, though, is that more offense from the top line would make muffs like the kind Bernier and Warsofsky made less of a killer situation.

Alexander Kerfoot scored the lone goal for the Avs, on the power play at 4:31 of the second. The Avs played a strong second overall, but couldn’t even it up. Overall, though, there was just too big of a gap between the forwards and defense in the critical first period, and Bernier couldn’t bail anyone out like he often has done.

The Avs will take Tuesday off, practice Wednesday in San Jose and lace-em back up against the Sharks Thursday. Whether they will still be in a playoff spot by then? Unfortunately, they’ll have to turn their eyes back to the out-of-town scoreboard again to find out.

A win Monday would have avoided all that distraction.