I didn't make it out to practice Saturday after we got about a half foot of snow that started during Friday night's game. Got home pretty late while driving through a pretty wicked storm and am planning to stay in all day since the high temp is supposed to be 4 Fahrenheit.
Those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them.
The Avalanche did spend some time working on their feeble power play, which went 0-for-6 and was burned for a shorthanded goal in their 3-1 loss to Florida.
The powerless play is now 2-for-18 in the past five games. Both goals came last Sunday in Toronto.
"We need our power play to win us games, and tonight it was a difference maker for them," coach Jared Bednar said after the game.
The Avalanche did provide some entertainment for their win-starved fans after, allowing them to skate while the movie Elf was shown on the giant videoboards.
I'm speaking to the choir here, but this season is a lost cause. If the Avalanche play .500 on the road for the remainder of the season, they'd need 40 points in the remaining 26 home games just to finish with 90 for the year, which probably won't be enough to get into the playoffs.
And, let's face it, no way this team will win 20 more home games -- not after going 0-6-1 in the past seven at the Pepsi Center, where they're an awful 4-10-1 for the season.
"It's tough to explain," Bednar said Friday night. "I'm sure guys are thinking about it now and it's certainly not where we want to be. We'd like to be playing our best hockey in front of our fans, and it's been the opposite. We've played our best hockey on the road for most of our wins and for most of our losses."
As for the power play ...
"This is brutal," Nathan MacKinnon said. "Our PK was good, but our power play was horrible. We didn't make any good plays, we forced everything. We knew they were going to come hard and we weren't ready for it."
Said Gabriel Landeskog:
"Not good enough. Honestly, I don't know what to tell you guys other than that's not the way we want to do it, not the way it's supposed to be done. Not acceptable.
"We have to make sure we capitalize on our power plays. We might have had one or two where we created some momentum and got something going. Obviously the power play needs to be better, but overall we need to be better 5-on-5. We just don't have a shot mentality. We haven't won at home in seven or eight games. You have to throw everything at the net, you have to find a way to score goals."