Avalanche Has New Attitude

After a restless night that followed several missed shots and one big missed opportunity, the Colorado Avalanche awoke Wednesday in Denver with a fresh perspective: It could be worse.

Colorado failed to eliminate Dallas Tuesday night, when the Stars won, 4-1, to send the Western Conference finals back to Texas for Game 7 Friday night.

“I’m sure everybody was rolling in bed saying, ‘Oh, we could have finished them,’ ” Colorado forward Claude Lemieux said Wednesday. “But we could have lost Game 5 and won Game 6 and be real happy to be part of Game 7. It’s the other way around. I’m real happy to be there, too, because we’re one game away from going to the Stanley Cup finals.”

Having lost six times in nine postseason home games, Colorado is heading into its comfort zone by changing time zones. The Avalanche is 8-1 on the road and has won two of three games in Dallas.

The NHL record for playoff road victories is 10 by the 1995 New Jersey Devils, the team Lemieux helped lead to the Stanley Cup title. Coincidentally, Colorado also won eight road games en route to the championship in 1996.

“Obviously for our club, I think the guys would much rather play in Dallas than play at home,” Lemieux said. “That’s easy to say because regardless of if we would rather play at home, we’re going on the road. But no one’s going to complain about going to Dallas.”

Lemieux has been part of a Game 7 seven times in a 13-year career with Colorado, New Jersey and Montreal. His teams are 3-4 in such games, the most recent being the Avalanche’s 4-0 loss at home to Edmonton last year.

Not since 1985 has Colorado prevailed in a seven-game series.

“We have to just open up the book we started writing since training camp,” rookie Coach Bob Hartley said. “We’ve jumped many hurdles and we tripped on a couple of occasions. Every time we went down, we found ways to get back up.”

Although the series has been unpredictable at every turn, Hartley and Lemieux agreed that goaltending probably will determine which team moves on to play the Buffalo Sabres in the finals.

Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy and Dallas goalie Ed Belfour have been solid with one exception: Game 5, when the Avalanche outlasted the Stars, 7-5.

“We can definitely count on Patrick,” Hartley said. “Patrick is feeding off those kinds of feelings. He is going to be ready to go.”

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The Pittsburgh Penguins, now operating with protection from creditors, could be moved to another city before the summer. Even so, the team is making a push to sell 12,000 season tickets and trying to capitalize on civic pride.

“It’s a very ambitious goal,” David Andrews, the Penguins’ chief operating officer, said. “But we hope to create a groundswell to demonstrate to the National Hockey League and to potential buyers Mario Lemieux and SMG-Fox that there is tremendous fan support for the Pens.”

Fans who buy the tickets won’t lose their money if the team moves.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Bernard Markovitz last week allowed the team to set up an escrow account to protect the money from creditors. If the Penguins move to another city, ticket buyers will get their money back. The team wants to sell as many tickets as possible by June 24, the date Markovitz has set for deciding who will buy the team.

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The Mighty Ducks raised season ticket prices for the sixth time in six seasons, with the cost of an average ticket up 3.5% to $42.56. The Ducks did not announce single-game prices, so the overall average ticket price for next season will probably be higher than $42.56. As part of season-ticket packages, game tickets range from $15 to $37.50 on the terrace level and $67.50 to $162.50 on the plaza level.