Avs fall at home again
Rangers’ Kreider scores hat trick
A little over an hour before the ball dropped in New York on Saturday night, the hockey team that plays its home games a few (short Manhattan) blocks to the south of Times Square finished off its business against the Avalanche in the Pepsi Center.
Center Chris Kreider had three goals as the Rangers beat Colorado 6-2, and the quirky thing about it was that none of the many New York fans in the crowd tossed hats on the ice after his third. Perhaps it was because they were thinking that the scoring on at least one of the Kreider goals ultimately would be changed; or maybe were too depressed because of the closing of the Carnegie Deli.
Winger J.T. Miller added two goals for the Rangers, who broke out of a 2-2 tie midway through the second period and went on to what is becoming the familiar road team’s rout of the Avalanche in Denver. It’s almost as if the story now can come from a template; just fill in the blanks.
With Semyon Varlamov still unavailable because of groin muscle issues, Calvin Pickard got his fourth consecutive start in the Colorado net and allowed the six goals on 37 shots. Cody McLeod and Blake Comeau had the Colorado goals.
The loss was the Avalanche’s third in a row and extended its home-ice winless streak to 10 games (0-9-1). Colorado, now a horrific 4-13-1 at home, hasn’t won
«FROM 1CC at the Pepsi Center since beating the Los Angeles Kings 4-1 on Nov. 15. The Rangers (26-12-1), who scored twice on their five power plays, won their third in a row and got their league-high 13th road win.
“It seems like we find a way to lose differently every night,” said Matt Duchene, who had two shots while playing left wing on a line with Carl Soderberg and Jarome Iginla. “Tonight, I think we were in the (penalty) box way too much and we had pretty much two meaningless power plays at the end of the game where the game’s out of reach. It’s one thing when it’s back and forth PP’s, but when it’s just them. … They just get momentum and their top guys start to feel it. It’s a recipe for disaster. I think five-on-five, we did a really good job. We were right in it, we were outchancing them after two. We did a lot of good things, but you can’t beat a team that scores five goals regularly when you’re in the box all night.”
Pickard called it “frustrating,” and added, “It just seems like there isn’t much going our way and it’s getting pretty crazy at this point. And it seems like every home game we’re getting pumped. We just have to keep battling, keep competing.”
Avalanche coach Jared Bednar conceded his team is struggling.
“You can see it when the other team scores,” he said. “We’ve talked about it. They get down and we try to pick them up. But still, half of that is part of our own mistakes. We’re still making critical mistakes in a 2-2 hockey game. We have a (Tyson Barrie) turnover at the offensive zone blue line and they go down and score and then we take a bunch of penalties and they get another one. It’s on us to make sure we’re not making those kinds of mistakes and putting ourselves short-handed all the time.”
He added, “Obviously, we’re a work in progress here. We have a lot of work to do. We know that.”
The Avalanche next heads out