The longer the Jarome Iginla Goal Watch goes, it will continue to be a distraction for an Avalanche team that needs to start putting wins together, especially this week with Los Angeles, St. Louis and Nashville in the final three games of the homestand.

One example: Alex Tanguay wasn't the only guy, but he gave up what would have been a glorious scoring chance in the first period of Saturday's 4-0 loss to Calgary in an attempt to feed Iginla for his 600th career goal.

The play fizzled, the Avalanche took a bunch of penalties, were guilty of turnovers that cost them two goals and never got into much of an offensive flow. The game was basically over in the second period when the Flames, who had one goal in their previous two games combined, scored three times for the 4-0 lead.

Calvin Pickard replaced Semyon Varlamov (four goals, 19 shots) at 13:07 of the second period and turned back all 15 shots he faced.

The loss, coupled with Nashville's overtime win in Carolina, dropped the Avalanche six points behind the Predators for the second wild card in the West.

The Avalanche have gone 1-2-2 after winning five games in a row and the home record is now a putrid 6-9-3.

"We need to be better in our building," coach Patrick Roy said. "We need to dominate in our building and be more dangerous and play better hockey.

"I thought it was one of those nights where, honestly, I think we could have been here (Sunday) and I'm not sure we (would have) scored a goal yet."

Iginla is concerned that his teammates are too worried about his bid for that 600th goal and he's advised them to play a "normal" game.

"We talk about it," he said. "It's not to look for me. I want us to play normal, if anything use me as a decoy. There's a lot of time to get that (goal)."

Iginla is probably distracted as well. He felt obligated to talk about it following the morning skate with a gathering of Calgary media, having spent the first 15-plus seasons of his career with the Flames.

After the game -- his only shot on goal came 2 1-2 minutes into the third period and he's gone three games without a goal -- Iginla repeated earlier statements that the focus needs to be on winning games and moving up in the standings.

"Going forward I'd rather not talk about it every day," he said. "We need to be winning games and climbing into playoff contention. Yeah, I'd love to (score) it, but I'd love to win games. It's about winning games and (the goal) can happen along the way. That's what our focus has got to be.

"It'd be nice to get it over with so that it's not a distraction. Hopefully it's not and we focus on the next game to be as good as we can be and make sure we're ready and as intense as we've played for good stretches. Every part of our game wasn't up to what it needs to be. We've been playing a lot better hockey."

*****

The Avalanche took three first-period penalties, two by John Mitchell, and four more in the third, including a second slashing call against Mitchell after he'd been dropped to the fourth line with Cody McLeod and Jack Skille.

Roy changed three of the four lines, leaving the Gabriel Landeskog-Carl Soderberg-Blake Comeau line intact. Aside from the Mitchell swap, Mikhail Grigorenko centered Tanguay and Iginla, while MacKinnon skated with Andreas Martinsen and Matt Duchene.

"The (original) MacKinnon line had a rough night, they were on the ice for a lot of chances against," Roy said. "The Mitchell line (with Martinsen and Duchene) didn't do much either. The best line was clearly Soderberg's. He's been our best player with Comeau the last five or six games."

Roy said he thought about putting Landeskog, MacKinnon and Duchene together but tried it briefly in the third period against Chicago and wasn't impressed.

*****

Erik Johnson was as critical as anyone after the loss, coming on the heels of a 4-3 overtime defeat to the Blackhawks.

"Where we are at right now in our season, we can’t afford to play a game like that where we weren’t really even in it halfway through the second period, didn’t have much of a chance," he said. "When we’re battling for such crucial points, like we are right now, we have to be in every game.

"That one just hurts because we have a lot of games coming up and we had the one point against Chicago so we really wanted to respond in front of a good crowd that supported us. It was one we let slip away. We have to be in every game and we can’t lay an egg like that, it’s unacceptable."


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