Avs Power Past Wings

The Colorado Avalanche scored twice on the power play, helping them earn a 5-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings.

Down 1-0 in the second period, Teemu Selanne scored while Colorado skated with the man-advantage to even the game up. Joe Sakic added a power play goal in the third period to give the Avalanche a 4-2 lead.

The Red Wings opened the scoring with a power play goal of their own with 1:16 left in the first period. Brendan Shanahan carried the puck in to the Colorado zone and held up just inside the blue line. He sent a hard pass to Steve Yzerman, who was cutting to the goal. Yzerman deflected the puck past Colorado netminder David Aebischer from the edge of the crease to give Detroit the 1-0 lead.

Selanne evened the score with 7:06 left in the second period. He tipped a wrist shot from Sakic through Detroit goalie Manny Legace’s pads. Red Wings defenseman Mathieu Schneider dove to stop the puck from trickling across the goal line but his clearing attempt bounced off the inside of the goal post and into the net.

The Red Wings regained the lead just 4:10 later, when a hard shot from the high slot by Jiri Fischer found its way under the crossbar. Colorado countered with 28 seconds remaining in the period when Karlis Skrastins fired a shot from the left point that deflected off a Detroit stick and into the top of Legace’s net.

The Avalanche took the lead 2:42 into the third period when Alex Tanguay put in the rebound of a shot from the blue line.

Sakic’s goal came on a wrist shot from the left faceoff dot and put the Avalanche up by two goals with 9:56 remaining in the game.

Peter Forsberg added an empty net goal to round out the game’s scoring.

Legace made 25 saves on 29 shots in net for the Red Wings. Aebischer stopeed 28 of the 30 shots he faced between the pipes for the Avalanche.