Iginla leads Avalanche in win over Senators

It was the highest save total of the season for Varlamov.

The Red Wings have been automatic lately when playing on limited rest, and they’re catching a struggling Avalanche team on the end of a back to back. “It was one of those things where you finish (Saturday’s game) and you go home and wake up in the morning and just sort of locked up and sore”. “They’ve got some good offence on their side”. “It gets a weight off our shoulders breaking a bad slide, and now we have to build upon this”.

“I thought it was important to play four lines?and that’s what we did”, coach Patrick Roy said. “I thought our energy level was great, I thought we won tons of puck races and puck battles in the “O” zone, I thought we shot the puck well, we had net presence….” “So when you sort of think that way I think you create more chances for yourself”. The Avalanche defeated the Senators 4-3 on Thursday night in Ottawa.

Iginla has eight goals in his last eight regular-season games at Detroit.

Dylan Larkin is facing the Avalanche for the first time.

It should be an intriguing game and one that should be exciting throughout the three periods. “A goalie can’t win a game by himself”, Varlamov said. It was Comeau’s ninth goal.

Duchene opened the scoring in the first period after the Red Wings were sloppy with the puck in their own zone. He tipped in a pass from center Mikhail Grigorenko, who was behind the net, from the bottom inside edge of the right circle.

Detroit evened it up in the second when Ericsson’s wrist shot from the point deflected off Duchene and then skipped off the ice surface and past Varlamov.

Varlamov made a spectacular save on Nyquist’s backhand shot as he came in off left wing and cut across in front of the crease three minutes into overtime. Mrazek, who is 10-2-1 in his last 13 games, leads the National Hockey League in save percentage (.934) and goals-against average (1.94) as Detroit tries for its fourth consecutive victory when it hosts the Colorado Avalanche on Friday.Mrazek started 17 of the first 31 games while sharing the duties with Jimmy Howard, but Howard has started only five times – with four losses in second contests of back-to-back games – since Mrazek took over December 20.

Matt Duchene leads Colorado with 24 goals, three shy of his career high set in 2010-11.

He declined to reveal that wise man but said, “It was a bunch of them, Detroit scouts and management”.

The Senators pressed hard in the third and despite having the only power play of the final period, fell short of ever tying the game.