Ducks Have No Answer for Roy

Colorado goalie Patrick Roy was everywhere Monday night. Or so it seemed.

He chased pucks into the corner, where he sometimes lingered. He belted the Ducks’ Paul Kariya in the chin. He played briefly without a stick. He even spent a couple of minutes watching from the bench.

If the Avalanche was looking for something--or someone--to shake it out of the doldrums, Roy’s shtick seemed to do the trick in a 4-2 victory over the Ducks.

Roy entertained the announced crowd of 16,565 at the Arrowhead Pond, even if he didn’t get credit for the victory--he had been replaced briefly by backup Craig Billington when the Avalanche scored the go-ahead goal.

Such were the oddities in the first of back-to-back games for two teams that are already jockeying for playoff position. The Ducks, who lost for the first time in six games, and Avalanche are now tied at 31 points--good enough for a playoff spot if the season ended today.

Or is that looking too far ahead?

“It’s the time of year where you start looking at how many points you got to get for a spot in the playoffs,” Coach Craig Hartsburg said. “You don’t want to be under .500. if you’re under .500, you’re scrambling.”

The Ducks are 12-12-7 after squandering a 2-1 second-period lead.

“We didn’t come hungry tonight,” Hartsburg said. “We could have put them away or put them down. Our competing wasn’t good enough to win a game like this.”

Avalanche players realized the significance as well, especially with a rematch against the Ducks tonight.

“This is a chance to pick up four points on them,” said Avalanche right wing Claude Lemieux, who scored the final goal at 12 minutes 7 seconds of the third period. “It can be a big swing.”

They played that way. By the time the first period was halfway over, four players had been sent off for fighting, two had been given misconduct penalties and the Ducks’ Jim McKenzie had been handed a triple--two minutes for instigating, five minutes for fighting and a game misconduct.

Colorado then rallied from a 2-1 deficit to end a 0-3-1 skid, with credit to Roy.

The Ducks could do little against Roy, who stopped 27 of 29 shots, despite several good opportunities, including wide-open chances for Teemu Selanne.

Selanne did take advantage of Paul Kariya’s timely pass in the first period, scoringthe Ducks’ 14th power-play goal in their last nine games to tie the game, 1-1. Travis Green made it 2-1 when he beat Roy to the right in the second period.

“That second goal made me mad,” Roy said. “I should have had it.”

He didn’t miss another in a typical Roy performance in which he wandered from the net often and almost got burned a couple of times but prevailed in the end.

The Avalanche goalie was hit with a high-sticking penalty in the second period, after he whacked Kariya in the face. Roy compounded that by complaining to referees and tossing his stick in the air. He was given a unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, increasing his penalty minutes to 20 for the season, tops among goalies.

“We had to do whatever we could to win,” Roy said. “‘We knew we were going into a tough place to play. We haven’t had too much luck here.”

It gave the Ducks a four-minute power play, but Roy turned them away, and the double-minor seemed to put some life into the Avalanche.

“That was a big chance for us to capitalize,” Duck left wing Marty McInnis said. “We had a couple shots in front and didn’t score. Then they came down and scored.”

Roy had a good view of it from the bench. He was replaced by Billington and watched for 2:18, sitting just long enough for Milan Hejduk to score for a 3-2 Colorado lead.

It was the Avalanche’s first power-play goal in its last 27 chances, covering three-plus games.

“I looked around and [saw] our defensemen were exhausted,” Avalanche Coach Bob Hartley said of the reason for the goalie change. “That’s a loophole in the rules to get some rest for your players.”