I thought the Avalanche were decent Tuesday night, but decent won't cut it anymore. Goalie Calvin Pickard was terrific in the 3-0 loss to Nashville, which scored two empty-net goals inside the final two minutes.
"He was good tonight," coach Patrick Roy said. "He made some great saves, but I thought we defended pretty well in front of him. They had a lot of power plays (six) and I thought defensively we had a good game. Yes, we gave a few good scoring chances, but I was happy with the way we played defensively."
The Avalanche have lost four games in a row (0-3-1), are 5-7-2 at home and 9-13-6 overall with four more regulation losses than wins for the first time since they were 4-8-5 after a 6-0 loss to the New York Islanders on Nov. 11.
Pickard, called up from Lake Erie for the third time Monday because Semyon Varlamov is expected to miss at least two weeks with a groin injury, stopped 33 of 34 shots. Predators rookie phenom Filip Forsberg beat him on a breakaway 2:23 into the game, but that was it. Pickard stopped him on another breakaway in the first period and made a number of other big saves.
But the Avalanche continue to struggle on offense. They have been shut out four times and held to two goals or fewer in 11 other games. They were 0-for-2 on power plays -- one lasted barely over a minute because of a too-many-men penalty (how does that happen on a power play?) -- and the Avalanche are in a 3-for-26 slump with the man advantage in the past 10 games.
"Very easy," Roy said when asked about the offensive woes. "Look at the sequence (in the second period) when we hit (three) posts. We had net presence, as simple as that. We had somebody close to the net. We're just maybe looking for the perfect goal all the time. That's not the way it works. Sometimes you're going to have the ugly one. (Predators goalie Pekka Rinne) was seeing everything, he was sharp. I think we were not that much of a threat to him."
But when asked if he would consider breaking up the top two lines by replacing someone with a grinder who might actually drive the net, Roy answered:
"We tried that early in the season and I don't think it was the solution. No, I'm going to stick to this. As a goalie, my coach was living and dying with me. Then I'm going to live and die with these guys. I'm going to trust them and I believe that eventually the puck will go in."
Rinne made 26 saves, but he only faced 15 shots through the first two periods and the Predators held the Avalanche without a shot on goal for 10 minutes during one stretch in the second period when they forechecked Colorado to death.
"We didn't have nearly enough (scoring chances)," Matt Duchene said. "They did a good job, they're a good defensive team, but we have to generate more. 'Picks' gave us a chance to win, we gave ourselves a chance to win by how we played defensively and the penalty kill.
"It's not a 3-0 game, it's a 1-0 game, but the goose egg is on the board for us for a reason. I think we're trying too much and have to keep it simple. We're all kind of confused maybe a little bit. It's tough right now. That's a game that kind of takes the wind out of your sails a little bit."
Reminded that the Predators have a way of shutting teams down, Duchene said: "Yeah, at the same time it's not like we've been scoring four or five a game. Tonight we didn't show up offensively. We're not getting anything going right now. We didn't get anything going in Winnipeg (in Friday's 6-2 loss) and we didn't get anything going tonight. It's tough to play when that's happening.
"(Pickard) played great, but we're frustrated just because we're not winning games. No matter who's playing well or who's not, we're not winning. We win and lose as a team. It would have been nice to play in front of him like he played back there, but we didn't. We have to figure this thing out and see what's going wrong here. I know we have to finds ways to generate more offense and score more goals. We're not a team that's built to win 2-1."
Pickard has gone 3-3-0 in his past six games despite a 1.82 goals-against average and .943 save percentage. He said he might have started to go down "a little too early" on Forsberg's breakaway.
"Good players make you pay, and he made me pay," he said. "I played against him last year in the minors. He had a couple goals against me. I know what he's capable of, their whole line. They're a good line and they're having a lot of success. We knew we had to key on them and I thought we did a pretty good job."
*****
Forsberg, 20, leads NHL rookies in goals (12) and points (27), and his plus-23 plus/minus figure is the league's best. Aside from his goal, he had an assist on James Neal's empty-netter, giving him nine multi-point games this season. He was drafted by Washington with the 11th overall pick in 2012 that was acquired from the Avalanche as part of the Varlamov trade. But the Capitals traded him to Nashville in April 2013 in exchange for Michael Erat and Michael Latta. Think they regret making that deal?
Borna Rendulic was the fifth Avalanche player to make his NHL debut. He was recalled from Lake Erie on Tuesday morning and had one shot in 7:47 of ice time. Turns out he was the second Croatian-born player to play an NHL game. Goran Bezina was the first when he played in a March 10, 2004 game for the Coyotes, the first of three games he played in 2003-04.
Nathan MacKinnon had seven shots on goal and hit a post. He's taken 30 shots on goal without scoring in a 10-game slump ... Duchene, who played on several lines in 18:18 of ice time, had one shot and won 10 of 12 faceoffs. The Avalanche won 38 of 62 draws (61 percent) ... Nick Holden played left wing and defense in 8:11 of ice time, and he helped kill penalties ... Predators defenseman Seth Jones had an assist, his sixth of the season without a goal, and three shots in 16:14.