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Riding the Zamboni - Monday, January 10th

Detroit Red Wings v Colorado Avalanche

the Detroit Red Wings the Colorado Avalanche at the Pepsi Center on December 27, 2010 in Denver, Colorado.

Doug Pensinger

Colorado 5 - Detroit 4

Colorado did their damage in the first period and never really looked back. The Avalanche scored four goals in the first, two from Matt Duchene, and chased Detroit starter Jimmy Howard from the game. In typical Avalanche fashion, the game was high scoring with Colorado holding a 4-2 lead after the first period.

Newly recalled Joey McDonald made his sudden appearance count though as he was able to hold the Avs to just one more goal through the rest of the game, but that one goal would be the game winner by David Jones on a 2-on-1 early in the second period to make it 5-2. The Wings made it interesting getting power play goals from Henrik Zetterberg in the second and Tomas Holmstrom in the third, but couldn’t knot it up. Peter Budaj made 26 saves in getting the win while McDonald stopped 15 of 16 shots. Howard was miserable saving just six out of ten shots he faced.

Boston 4 - Pittsburgh 2

What was a 2-0 lead for Pittsburgh vanished as the Penguins gave up four goals in the final 3:23 of the game to fall in insane fashion to Boston 4-2. Boston got power play goals from Zdeno Chara and Mark Recchi, Recchi’s the game-winner, and others from Brad Marchand and Gregory Campbell to make what was a great effort out of Marc-Andre Fleury into a gut-wrenching loss. Tuukka Rask stopped 23 shots in the win while Fleury saved 28 in the loss.

Phoenix 4 - St. Louis 3

A roller coaster game for Phoenix falls in their favor as they blew a 2-1 lead after the Blues scored 20 seconds apart early in the third with goals from Matt D’Agostini and Brad Winchester but bounced back big in the third. Kyle Turris led the charge tying the game with a goal and assisted five minutes later on Taylor Pyatt’s game-winner at 16:48. Jason LaBarbera got the start once again in net and held it together well stopping 33 shots in the win. Jaroslav Halak played well saving 29 shots while not getting great support from his teammates. The win is the Coyotes third in their last four games. For St. Louis, their up and down season rolls on on the downside as this was their fourth straight loss.

Toronto 3 - Los Angeles 2

The good news for L.A. is that they already broke their losing streak on Saturday night. The bad news is that they’ve now lost six of their last seven games and flat out got beat by the Leafs tonight. Nikolai Kulemin’s early third period goal snapped a 2-2 tie and James Reimer held strong in goal stopping 30 Kings shots. For the Leafs it’s an encouraging win considering that their lineup is very young and they’re getting help, finally, from Phil Kessel who had a goal in this game.It’s the Leafs third straight win, their longest streak since starting the season 4-0-0.

The Kings, meanwhile, have something wrong going on with them. Running into a hot goalie will happen now and again, but there’s something not quite working right in L.A. GM Dean Lombardi might be in the position to shake things up a little bit to snap them out of it. A bit of defensive help could go a long way.