Avs beat Flames 5-2 to get back in playoff picture

DENVER – Don’t look now, but the Colorado Avalanche is legitimately back in the playoff race of the Western Conference.

The Avs not only caught the Calgary Flames in points in the Western standings by beating them 5-2 Wednesday night, they still have two games in hand on the Flames. A big second period – four goals, after falling behind 2-0 – was the winning formula for Colorado.

Not a bad birthday present for coach Jared Bednar, who has somehow guided his team to a 3-1-1 record since Erik Johnson went down with an injury and caused all the Chicken Littles out there to presume the sky had fallen in on any Avs’ playoff hopes.

“The second, we went after ’em pretty good,” Bednar said. “We got our forecheck going and the power play gets a goal back. … guys played good, it was a great team effort.”

The first 25 minutes had all the hallmarks of one of those lamentable Avs home games, the kind where they get outworked and outperformed by a team that played on the road the night before. Despite a strong first few minutes possession- and shot-wise, the Avs failed to convert on anything. The Avs got a power play in the latter stage of the first, and then disaster struck.

Tyson Barrie fumbled a puck at the blue line. Then, while trying to regain it, he lost it to Mikael Backlund, who went the length of the ice and beat Semyon Varlamov off the backhand. That’s the way the score stayed entering the second, then Calgary got another too-easy goal to start the period.

Duncan Siemens, who has played so well of late, turned the puck over along the wall to Backlund, who fed it in front to Matthew Tkachuk, who fed it in front to Frolik for a tap-in. Things looked bleak as hell at that moment.

And then? And then everything turned sunshine and rainbows for the final 12 minutes of the period.

Colorado scored four times on third-string Flames goalie David Rittich, starting with Nathan MacKinnon’s blast to the near post, on the power play, for his 29th goal of the season. Just 1:08 later, at 9:32, Nikita Zadorov scored his fifth, a wrist shot off the rush and she was all tied up.

But the Avs were only halfway there to the scoring output of the period. Barrie finished off some perfect tic-tac-toe passing with Mikko Rantanen and Gabe Landeskog and now the Avs had the lead at 12:41.

“It was kind of a 3-on-2 (situation), and I cut to the middle and tried to open up on the other side and Barrie did a great job joining the rush as a D-man,” Rantanen said. ”

Matt Nieto, quiet of late offensively, got his name back on a scoresheet with a finish of a perfectly timed crossing pass from Carl Soderberg to the front of the net. A two-goal deficit was now a two-goal surplus entering the third.

“It was a great all-around play. (Blake Comeau) kind of got it to me in the neutral zone there, and me and Carl kind of created a 2-on-2. I kicked it out to him and just drove to the net. There really wasn’t anything there but Carl made a great pass across the crease there and I was able to keep my eye on it and get it over his blocker,” Nieto said.

The Avs probably went too much into sit-back mode in the third, and had a few hairy moments as a result. Siemens put the Flames on the power play with a dumb cross-check on Matt Stajan, then right after the Avs killed it off, took a too-many-men violation.

But the Flames weren’t immune to doing dumb things either. Flames star Johnny Gaudreau earned himself 12 minutes in penalties midway through the period when, after being called for embellishment from a stick to near the face from Blake Comeau, threw a fit in the penalty box.

That earned him a 10-minute misconduct, a break the Avs certainly didn’t mind getting.

Siemens got the empty-net goal to seal it, his first career goal. He earned a souvenir he’ll never forget.