Avs Talk - A Colorado Avalanche Blog

My prediction was wrong...but in such a right way! The Avs offense came out flying and took down the Oilers 7-3 in the end. Roloson had a shaky start but he didn't have a ton of help from his defense. For his part, Budaj looked fine in goal but I'm not sure about goal #3. I think I need to lean my armchair back a bit more to analyze it.

It was an overall solid effort by the Avs who responded as I'd hoped they would from a terrible game against the Flames. Now let's hope they keep this rolling when they coast into Vancouver for an HNIC game on Saturday. Unfortunately I'm at a staff party that night so I'll have to tape the game and watch it Sunday.

An unfortunate incident happened towards the end of the game. Ryan Smyth derailed Brad Richardson in a terribly unclassy move. Smyth has these habits of brain lapses when he gets ticked off (remember him hacking Chara's foot in Canada's loss to Slovakia?). No matter how much Ray Ferraro tried to defend it, or the post-game folks on Sportsnet, Smyth saw Richardson coming the whole way and did nothing to avoid the hit. In fact, he took a second to toss his elbow up into Richardson's face. No penalty on the play but hopefully it's reviewed by Colin "inconsistent" Campbell. Maybe Smyth will get a sternly worded letter.

Of course, we'll hear about this all day tomorrow and everytime you see the highlight, it will be preceded/followed by the Liles hit on Smyth which is ancient history since Liles apologized to Smyth. Don't get fooled by the hype, it was a dirty play by Smyth but at some point, he'll get his. Ah, revenge.

The Good
Tons off offense! Arnason, Liles, and Klee all had 3 points tonight.
Liles looked great defensively.
Svatos had wheels tonight and cashed in twice!
Hejduk's flu is gone it seems as he was flying all night.

The Bad
Brisebois directly cost two goals against and ended at -1.
They didn't let Lappy destroy Torres.

The Ugly
Ryan Smyth