AVALANCHE TOPS PREDATORS 5- 3
Big goal from Barrie boosts Colorado AVALANCHE 5, PREDATORS 3
Playoff hockey seemingly comes early to the Pepsi Center as the Predators and Avs battle for position in the standings.
This seemed enough like a playoff game, so the Avalanche could have placed pompoms on every seat and raised ticket prices. OK, strike that last part. But with Colorado and Nashville fighting over what would be the final wild- card playoff slot in the Western Conference, there was a lot on the line at the Pepsi Center on Friday night.
The red- hot Tyson Barrie’s third goal in the last three games, on a shot from the top of the slot as Gabe Landeskog screened Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne, broke a 3- 3 tie at 11: 00 of the third period and the Avalanche went on to open the second half of its season with a 5- 3 victory over the Predators that left both teams with 45 points. Colorado has the tiebreaker edge, though, with a 2117 advantage in regulation and overtime wins.
“I think their guy broke a stick and went to the bench,” Barrie said of his goal. “It went over to ( Nick Holden) and he made a good play back to me and I just tried to wrist one.”
Jarome Iginla, Cody McLeod and Landeskog had the earlier Colorado goals, and Jack Skille added an empty- netter with 1.4 seconds left.
“This is huge,” Barrie said. “I think everybody knows what it means. There’s still a lot of hockey back, but we’ve battled back and we’re grinding our way.”
After a 7- 12- 1 start that left the Avalanche at the bottom of the seven- team-Central Division, Colorado has gone 14- 6- 2 since, crawled back to 9- 9- 3 at home and passed Winnipeg and now Nashville in the division.
“Anytime you can smell a playoff spot, youwant to jump on that, make sure you take advantage of that opportunity,” said Landeskog,
the Avalanche captain. We know what it feels to be down in the standings and have a lot of teams ahead of you. Right now, we’re right in the mix and we want to keep this momentum going. We’ve been winning games for a reason, and that’s because we’re all working hard and we’re really doing our job and making sure we play like a team.”
Coach Patrick Roy noted the Avalanche is without its top defenseman, Erik Johnson, for the time being. “Our guys deserve a lot of credit,” he said. “Everybody is chipping in, everybody is playing hard. I’m very proud of our players right now.”
Ryan Johansen, the young center acquired in the splashy trade that sent defenseman Seth Jones to Columbus on Wednesday, didn’t take long to get his first goal for the Predators. Standing with the puck at the bottom of the left circle with the Avs on a penalty kill, Johansen seemed on the verge of passing, but instead got off the shot that beat Semyon Varlamov high to the stick side at 2: 35 of the opening period.
The Avalanche took the lead, though, with a pair of goals in a span of 2: 55 late in the first.
First, Iginla got his 601st career goal on a tap- in of a Carl Soderberg pass on a power play. Iginla pulled into a tie for 18th on the all- time NHL goals list with Jari Kurri, who got his final five while ending his career with the Avalanche in 1997- 98.
Then the fourth line pitched in, with McLeod getting a pow- er forward’s goal, crunching Predators defenseman Shea Weber in the corner, going to the net and converting Skille’s pass from behind the net.
After Nashville defenseman Ryan Ellis’ goal made it 2- 2 early in the second, Landeskog put the Avalanche back in front. On a Colorado 2- on- 1, Nashville winger Eric Nystrom got his stick on Soderberg’s pass, but it still made it to Landeskog breaking in, and the Avalanche captain shot it past Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne.
Filip Forsberg tied it up again for the Predators with his 11th of the season at 16: 37 of the second. Then Barrie’s goal, his seventh of the season, put the Avalanche back up for good.
The crowd of 17,680 — just short of the Avalanche’s sixth sellout of the season — increased the Colorado average home attendance to 16,405.
“We want to excite our fans, and that’s important to us,” said Roy. “We feel that ifwe excite them, they’re going to come back, like it was in my ( playing) days. I’m sure everyone who came here tonight, they had a blast.”