The good news for the Colorado Avalanche is that they won, 4-3, over the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night. The somewhat bad news is that they need overtime to accomplish this. The Avalanche entered this game on a two-game losing streak and had won only one game in their last six. That victory came in a shootout against the Edmonton Oilers on Dec. 30.
Fortunately, David Jones decided to end things before the team needed to go to another shootout in an attempt to win. At 4:17 in the overtime period, Jones scored a power play goal against Ryan Miller for the victory.
The Avalanche had jumped out to a 2-1 lead over the Sabres at the end of the first period on the strength of goals by Daniel Winnik and Ryan O'Reilly (shorthanded). Thomas Vanek scored Buffalo's goal on the power play. After a scoreless second period, things looked good for the Avalanche to start the third period.
However, the Sabres would not go down with a fight, and they scored two goals before six minutes were gone in the period. Jochen Hecht and Steve Montador scored back-to-back goals about a minute apart. But thirty seconds after Montador's goal, Colorado's Matt Duchene scored the equalizer, his 16th goal of the season.
Colorado started Peter Budaj in net, and he made 37 of 40 saves to be the third star of the game. Buffalo's Miller faced 34 shots and stopped 30 of them. Neither team capitalized too much on the power play: Buffalo (1-of-8), Colorado (1-of-6).
The Avalanche (21-14-5, 47 points) host the Phoenix Coyotes (18-13-8) on Thursday, Jan. 6 at 7:00 p.m. MT.