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All-too-familiar slide continues

December 8, 2017, 5:05 PM ET [0 Comments]
Rick Sadowski
Colorado Avalanche Blogger •Avalanche Insider • RSSArchiveCONTACT
In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season, it's beginning to look a lot like ...

Well, last season.

The Avalanche have been outscored18-7 (includes three empty-netters) in their four-game losing streak to New Jersey, Dallas, Buffalo and Tampa Bay, which is all too reminiscent of their crash-and-burn at this time a year ago.

They need to stop this slide right now, starting Saturday against Florida, especially with games against Pittsburgh and Washington to end the trip, followed by Florida, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles at home, which hasn't been an advantage against anyone lately.

The Panthers (11-13-4) are pretty much in the same foundering boat as the Avalanche (12-13-2), who, by the way, are three games below .500 now, not one.

This by far will be the Avalanche's best chance to end the slide in this stretch. They'll face goalie James Reimer because Roberto Luongo is out with a groin injury, and Panthers forward Aleksander Barkov is expected to miss the game with an upper-body injury he sustained Thursday in a 6-4 win against Winnipeg.

As for losing to the Lightning:

"Obviously, this is the best team in the league right now," coach Jared Bednar told reporters. "As a young team we have to pay attention to the process and continuing to find things to build on. There were some things in that game that we did that were better than what we did in the (previous) three games at home. So it’s a step forward. Now we got to take another step.”

A step forward in a 5-2 loss? OK.

Well, captain Gabriel Landeskog returned after completing his four-game suspension and scored on his first shift . But Steven Stamkos scored on a breakaway 25 seconds later.

“We get our first lead in the first period and they get a breakaway and score right off the bat," Landeskog said.

Chris Kunitz put the Lightning in front when he redirected Dan Girardi's shot past goalie Semyon Varlamov (27 saves) and Erik Johnson tied it 2-2 with 1:38 left in the period.

That was it for the Avalanche. The Lightning took the lead for good on a second-period goal by Vladislav Namestnikov and secured the win with third-period goals from Alex Killorn (power play) and Brayden Point (shorthanded, empty net).

Former Avalanche goalie Peter Budaj had 28 saves, including two breakaway stops on J.T. Compher.

Colorado has not scored more than two goals in regulation in seven consecutive games.



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