A preview for the Colorado Avalanche and Toronto Maple Leafs game.
To earn their latest win - a 6-5 shootout victory over Montreal - the Avalanche had to endure a wild game Saturday. David Jones' second goal of the second period gave his team a 4-3 lead after two, but Colorado fell behind in the third before Kyle Quincey tied it with 4:03 remaining in regulation.
"We've got to ride it when we're hot," forward Milan Hejduk said. "We want to go 5-0 on this road trip. That would be huge."
The Avalanche are riding their longest winning streak since a six-game run Dec. 10-19. They lost 38 of 49 after that to finish with the second-fewest points in the NHL (68).
The Avs get to see John-Michael Liles again, unfortunately it won't be in Avs gear.
Liles added that there are no hard feelings despite the fact he was on the trade block for a while and was eventually dealt to Toronto for a second-round pick at the end of June.
"I had a great time there in the eight years that I spent there," Liles said after practice Sunday. "It was a great organization to play for ... You look back on it with some pretty good memories, but that's all it is right now. Memories. My focus now is playing for the Leafs."
A recap from the Montreal Canadiens and the Colorado Avalanche.
The Avalanche have gotten two points in 28 of their past 38 games that were not decided in regulation.
"We're a pretty skilled team," said center Paul Stastny, who had a goal and an assist.
"Four-on-four we're pretty confident. We've always had good goaltending at breakaways and we can always count on at least one goal out of three. In a game like this I think sometimes that's just what you want to take it into and go from there. It's kind of a coin toss, but we're confident enough to think that we'll be favored if we go into a shootout."
Don Cherry issued an apology, but will it be enough?
For those not wearing the Cherry Decoder Ring, the reaction was that the voluble ex-coach had been well briefed last week by lawyers and suits about the efficacy of a prompt apology in any potential libel or slander action, which had been hinted at by Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson, the trio of knucklebusters Cherry had wrongly linked to addiction problems.
After all, Cherry had had a Coach’s Corner two days after calling the trio "pukes, hypocrites and turncoats." Other than lamenting the term "pukes," Cherry had been defiant on the intervening Coach’s Corner. Then came the legal threat. Saturday, Cherry was the soul of human kindness. What’s that spell?