Seventh Heaven for Avalanche

Well, that was fun while it lasted. Can’t wait to see if the Colorado Avalanche sticks to its appointed rounds and wins the Stanley Cup championship the organization firmly believes it is destined to win next month.

If it comforts you, as a King fan, imagine it this way: your team didn’t really lose Game 7 to the Avalanche.

Instead, after dreary showings in Games 5 and 6, the talent-rich Avalanche finally found its game and its heart Wednesday and defeated the Kings, 5-1, before a raucous sellout crowd of 18,007 at the Pepsi Center.

King Coach Andy Murray pulled as many strings as he could to get a team comprised largely of playoff novices as far as he did. There were only so many buttons he could push, however. The Kings’ margin for error was so slim.

But it had been that way since February, when a playoff appearance seemed out of the question.

It also was that way in the first round of the playoffs against the Detroit Red Wings, when the Kings lost the first two games before rallying for a 4-2 series victory.

And it was that way in this series against Colorado, when the Kings fell behind, 3-1, before rallying with 1-0 victories in Games 5 and 6.

Game 7 simply went to the superior team, the one with everything to lose Wednesday. The angst over another possible Game 7 belly flop was palpable all around Denver in the last few days.

So, were those cheers of joy or cheers of relief at game’s end?

“It’s just kind of a different attitude here [in Denver],” King defenseman Aaron Miler, a former Avalanche player, said before the game.

“If you don’t win the Cup, it’s a failure.”

Added Rob Blake, a defenseman who went from the Kings to the Avalanche in the Feb. 21 trade: “We understood we had to win. We were the No. 1 team in the league.”

Compound that pressure with three consecutive Game 7 losses for the Avalanche.

In 1998, Colorado squandered a 3-1 series lead and lost in the opening round to the Edmonton Oilers. That defeat cost Marc Crawford his job as coach.

In 1999, Colorado squandered a 3-2 series lead in the Western Conference finals and lost Games 6 and 7 to the Dallas Stars. Ed Belfour, Dallas’ enigmatic goaltender, outplayed Colorado’s Patrick Roy in the final games.

In 2000, Colorado rallied to tie the conference final series against Dallas at 3-all, but again lost Game 7. Belfour again outplayed Roy, whose record in Game 7s fell to 2-5.

Three strikes and you’re out.

But the Avalanche finally got it right Wednesday.

“Three years in a row and we finally got to win one,” Colorado’s crafty center Peter Forsberg said with an exhale at game’s end.

Roy played like the Hall of Famer he will be once his playing days are done. The only shot that eluded him was Nelson Emerson’s knuckling shot from left wing that tied the score at 1-all late in the second period.

Instead of feeling the pressure, the Avalanche responded to it.

Roy denied King center Bryan Smolinski on a point-blank try off Emerson’s pass from the right wing in the final seconds of the second period.

In the final 20 minutes, the Avalanche roared over the blue line repeatedly. Chris Drury snapped a centering pass from Forsberg over goaltender Felix Potvin’s left shoulder for the go-ahead goal 3:03 into the final period.

After spending the last two games trying without much success to free himself from King defenseman Mattias Norstrom, Forsberg finally showed himself to be one of the league’s elite players.

Instead of playing in slow motion, the Avalanche awoke to break the Kings’ backs with the offense hockey fans have grown accustomed to seeing on the nightly highlight shows.

No question, it had gone missing in Games 5 and 6. Some of the Avalanche’s resurgence can be traced to Joe Sakic’s improved play after a bum shoulder kept him out of Games 4 and 5.

“I felt better shooting the puck,” Sakic said after firing eight on Potvin’s net Wednesday. “But that wasn’t really the problem.”

Mucking and grinding and taking faceoffs pained him, so he avoided high traffic areas and did not take draws in Game 6. In Game 7, he was all over the ice and his faceoff victory while Colorado was on a first-period power play set up Blake’s goal with 1:31 left.

Emerson’s tying goal seemed to take the life out of the building with 1:29 left in the second period. But the Avalanche did not crumble. There was very little said during the intermission between the second and third periods, according to Sakic.

“All we wanted to do was keep doing what we had been doing,” he said. “Maybe we wanted to slow it down a little bit. But we’d been generating a lot of chances. We just wanted to keep it going.”

Did the Avalanche ever.

Now it’s on to the conference finals against the St. Louis Blues.