Home Is Finally Sweet for the Avalanche, 5-4

The Colorado Avalanche continued to struggle on special teams, survived a late goal and fought off a flurry of shots in the final six minutes, but somehow found a way to finally end its worst home start.

Milan Hejduk scored two goals, and Peter Forsberg had a goal and an assist as Colorado ended its home winless streak at eight games with a 5-4 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday night at Denver.

“Certainly it was not a fun week for anyone, starting with our fans, for us, the management, the players,” Coach Bob Hartley said.

“We were not happy with where we were at and we are still not happy with where we are at, but tonight it’s two points.”

Colorado, the last NHL team to win at home, improved to 1-4-3-1 at home and salvaged one win in its five-game home stand (1-3-0-1).

Vancouver 6, St. Louis 3 -- Todd Bertuzzi, Todd Warriner, Brendan Morrison and Artem Chubarov each had a goal and an assist as the Canucks ended a six-game winless streak at Vancouver.

Edmonton 3, Minnesota 2 -- Mike Comrie scored twice at St. Paul, Minn., for the Oilers, who are unbeaten (9-0-2-0) against the Wild.

Dallas 4, Montreal 2 -- Sergei Zubov, Manny Malhotra and Jason Arnott each scored first-period goals for the Stars at Montreal.

Pierre Turgeon got the 1,200th point of his career with an assist on Arnott’s goal.

Arnott’s goal gave the Stars a 3-0 lead just 10:07 in.

Detroit 4, Nashville 1 -- Brendan Shanahan scored twice to break a nine-game goal drought and added an assist at Detroit.

Martin Erat scored for Nashville, which ended a franchise-high seven-game trip 2-2-1-2.

Ottawa 5, New York Islanders 3 -- Shaun Van Allen’s goal early in the third period proved to be the game-winner at Uniondale, N.Y.

Ottawa is 19-1-6 in the last 26 meetings with the Islanders.

Boston 4, Buffalo 3 -- Joe Thornton scored two goals at Buffalo, N.Y., as the Bruins extended the Sabres’ winless streak to nine.

The Sabres are 0-7-2 during the streak, three short of the team record of 12 set in 1991.

They are only one point ahead of Atlanta for the worst record in the NHL.

Carolina 3, Phoenix 2 -- Ron Francis had a goal and an assist, and Kevin Weekes stopped 27 shots for the Hurricanes at Raleigh, N.C.