Aves at Stars and Beast of the East Meets Monster of the West

Colorado Avalanche at Dallas Stars

Just over 5 minutes has been played in tonight's tilt between Dallas and Colorado, but Dallas has already made it known that they intend to make up for blowing their one goal lead in the third period to the Aves just over 24 hours ago. Stu Barnes scored first at the 3:56 mark and he was followed by Stephane Robidas about a minute and a half later. The Aves have failed to register a shot on Marty Turco yet, while the Stars have 9 on Theodore. Dallas seems to be showing some anger over how they've played lately and it appears that they intend to take it out on the Avalanche tonight. Speaking of out, Peter Forsberg is not in the lineup tonight. He's played big minutes in each game thus far and perhaps he was given the night off after playing yesterday. Regardless, Colorado has a hill to climb and is down one man that could really help them do it.

Update (7:46 central): The Colorado Avalanche ended the first period having more fights than shots on goal as they only registered a single shot on Marty Turco while the Stars finished with two goals on 12 shots.

After it was all said and done, things wouldn't get much better for the Avalanche. Brad Richards, the newest Dallas Star, scored 7 minutes into the 2nd from Brenden Morrow and Mike Modano and that would end the scoring for both teams. Peter Budaj came out to start the third and only faced 5 shots in the period but it was too late. The shots ended up being relatively even, 26 for Dallas and 19 for Colorado, but the Avalanche were unable to beat Turco and fell 3-0. It turns out that Peter Forsberg sat out with a strained groin. Hopefully it won't keep him out of the lineup too long.

Montreal Canadiens at Anaheim Ducks

Meanwhile in Anaheim, the Ducks scored a fluke goal only 21 seconds into the 1st period but a reawakened Alexei Kovalev struck back 8 minutes later to score his 30th goal of what has clearly been a turnaround season for the veteran winger. Kovalev now has 73 points on the season, the most he's had in a Habs uniform, and is on-pace to have his best season since 2000-2001.

Anaheim ultimately dominated this game and had it not been for Carey Price this game would have been out of hand. Price made 34 saves on 37 shots while the Canadiens registered 21 shots on Jean Sebastian Giguere but were only able to beat him once. Chris Kunitz and Samuel Pahlsson scored only 33 seconds apart to put Anaheim up 3-1 and that's where the game would stay. Giggy went long stretches without seeing a shot but he managed to stay sharp and the Ducks ended a 2 game losing streak.