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Colorado's Kyle Cumiskey crowds the Calgary crease during the Avalanche's slim 3-2 win.
“With the season we had last year, I was so disappointed. Hitting rock bottom there, you tend to step back a little bit and assess how the season went and what you have to do to get ready for the next season.” – Wojtek Wolski
The Calgary Flames discovered first hand what the rest of their Western Conference counterparts will soon realize on their own – the Colorado Avalanche are a proverbial pain in the posterior. Playing a patient, poised game, the new darlings of Denver used gallant goaltending and opportunistic scoring to record a slim 3-2 win over their Northwest Division rivals.
Picked by many pre-season prognosticators to finish in the lower tier of the division, the Avalanche have stormed out of the gate with ten wins in their first 13 games to stand atop the NHL standings with a league-best 22 points. Wednesday night’s tidy 3-2 decision over the Flames was the club’s fourth consecutive victory and their sixth road win of the season – a mark the team didn’t last year until December.
Colorado opened the season without Joe Sakic – the first time his name wasn’t on the roster since the club arrived in Colorado – and with a rookie pivot (Joe Sacco) behind the pine. “Veterans” Wojtek Wolski and Paul Stastny (both 23-years-old) were complimented by a pair of precocious 18-somethings (Ryan O’Reilly and Matt Duchene) in the lineup. Hell, Sakic already had 100 goals on his NHL resume before O’Reilly and Duchene were even born.
Crease cop Craig Anderson – who was without a NHL contract until Colorado scraped him off the unemployment heap – was handed the starting goaltending job in training camp. The eight-year veteran has responded to his new employer’s flash of faith by establishing a team record with 10 victories in the opening month of the season – only five wins shy of his single-season career-high.
Using a blueprint similar to the one scripted in their 5-4 win over Carolina that started the team’s current streak, Colorado spotted their opponents a quick 2-0 lead.
In their first game since Saturday’s decisive 5-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers – the Flames were 9-0 in games played after a three-game sojourn since the lockout of 2004 – Calgary opened with an uncharacteristic burst of offensive energy.
At the 55-second mark of the match, Jarome Iginla stepped over the blueline and fluttered a weak wrister that surprisingly eluded Colorado crease keeper Craig Anderson. Fifteen seconds later, Olli Jokinen circled the Colorado cage and drifted a blind prayer towards the net that bounced, ballooned and eventually bled its way behind a beleaguered Anderson. The two rapid-fire markers – foul in fragrance but swift in sequence – established a new team record for the quickest goals scored from the start of a game played at the Saddledome.
Instead of collapsing, the youthful Avalanche tightened the reins, closed down the Calgary cavalry and chipped away at the early deficit. David Koci deftly deflected Brett Clark’s blast from the blueline past Miikka Kiprusoff to close the gap to a single goal before David Jones tucked home the tying marker during a mad scramble in front of the Flames crease.
After a scoreless middle frame, Colorado collected the winning goal early in the final stanza. Wojtek Wolski waltzed into the Flames zone, sidestepped past a pair of Flame defenders into the center spot of the slot and snapped a wrist shot past Kipper the Keeper for the decisive docket. It was Wolski’s team leading ninth counter of the campaign, putting him on target to easily surpass the 14 goals he scored in 2008-09.
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