The sweep of the NHL from Sunday starts in Denver where the Colorado Avalanche were looking to pick up points on the Minnesota Wild who lost in Winnipeg.
The Avs lost to the St Louis Blues, 5-1.
The real story of the game was the loss of Jake Allen to injury in the Blues net.
There was no immediate word of the injury but Allen was replaced at the start of the second period by Anders Nilsson.
“I’m not sure,” Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. “We’ll know a little bit more on Jake [Monday]. Hopefully it’s day to day.”
Allen was slow to get up late in the first period after making saves.
“But I didn’t know what happened,” Nilsson said. “I was a little surprised when they said he’s not going in the second. Hopefully it’s not too bad and he can be on the ice real soon.”
The Blues built a 4-0 lead on goals from David Backes, Magnus Paajarvi, Colton Parayko, and Alex Pietrangelo.
“The biggest thing is worrying about ourselves,” Pietrangelo said. “We know if we play the way we can, we’re going to put ourselves in a good position.”
The Avs have three games left and the Wild two with five points separating the two teams.
“It’s disappointing not to come away with two (points) there and gain a little ground,” Avalanche center Matt Duchene (the lone Avs scorer) said. “The good news is we’re still in it, we have a chance here. We have to regroup and go for it. We’re working hard, but we have to be smarter. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot too much.
“We’re fighting for our lives. We’re going to have to show what kind of mental fortitude we have, and right now it’s not as good as it could be and we need to be better.”
Calvin Pickard finished the game for the Avs, he made 23 saves, after replacing Semyon Varlamov who surrendered three goals on 14 shots in the first period.
“For some reason we’re in a funk at home and we’re struggling winning some hockey games,” Avs coach Patrick Roy said. “It’s not the type of hockey we want to play. I think we need to learn how to win, we need to change the mindset. I think we have a losing mindset right now.
“I think we have to find ways to believe more in ourselves. Sometimes things are not going to go our way. We might give up one goal, we might give up two goals. Who cares? We need to play our game.”
Troy Brouwer scored the Blues’ fifth goal in an empty net.
In a tale of two games in Chicago, the Blackhawks busted out to a 6-0 lead then watched the Boston Bruins rally to make the final 6-4.
Patrick Kane had a hat trick and assist in the win.
“You’re feeling good up 6-0 and you give them those two goals with 15 seconds left in the period,” Kane said. “It’s not the ideal way to finish the second, especially knowing they’re going to come hard and try and press [in the third], which they did. They got a couple more, but obviously we did a great job of starting to give ourselves a little bit of a cushion and hang on for the [win].”
David Pastrnak and Patrice Bergeron started the rally for Boston in the second when they scored 11 seconds apart to close out the middle frame.
“This time of year, with what’s at stake, we have to be a lot better,” Bergeron said. “The focus is definitely what cost us the game early on, by making some mistakes and giving them the space that they wanted and making the plays that they wanted. It’s definitely not an excuse, with how many games left and what we’re looking at standings-wise.”
Bergeron scored again in the third along with Brad Marchand to make things a little more interesting.
“This one was a little crazier than we envisioned at one point, but certainly I’ve been fortunate to be with good teams, none better than the one I’m with right here,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “Been a fun situation, fun working in Chicago and great group of guys.”
It was Quenneville’s 800th NHL career win as coach.
Artemi Panarin, Artem Anisimov and Jonathan Toews also scored for Chicago.
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