• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Avery's two goals lead Kings over Avalanche

Nov 8, 2006 - 5:32 AM DENVER (Ticker) -- Sean Avery helped the Los Angeles Kings snap their five-game road losing streak in style.

Avery scored two goals and Mike Cammalleri and Alexander Frolov added three assists each to lead the Kings to a 6-5 victory over the Colorado Avalanche.

Trailing, 2-1, Los Angeles tallied four times in the second period on goals by Lubomir Visnovsky, Avery, Scott Thornton and rookie Anze Kopitar to take a 5-2 lead. Avery tallied shorthanded.

"Offensively tonight, we got fortunate," Kings coach Marc Crawford said. "We did some good things and I thought getting the breakaway shorthanded kind of lifted our spirits a bit, and in the second period we got some big saves from our goalie.

"That was our best period by far. We shot the puck very well. It was a game tonight where the shooters were good and the chances were plentiful. It was a win where we were rewarded for our effort."

Avalanche goaltender Jose Theodore was pulled after the second session after surrendering five goals on 22 shots and replaced by Peter Budaj to start the third.

"Tonight, we had a couple of defensive breakdowns, but they also made some great plays, Budaj said. "Our team showed a lot of character (coming back from behind). Our guys worked really hard. Our third period was really good. It's a 60-minute hockey game. If we would have played the same way as we did in the third, we probably would have won the hockey game."

Colorado fought back during the third period on tallies by Brett McLean and Joe Sakic to cut the lead to 5-4, but Avery countered with his second goal on the power play off of a rebound by Frolov with 6:41 left in the session to put the game out of reach.

"It could be me tonight, it could be Frolov tomorrow; as a team we're just trying to get goals and get wins," Avery said. "I'll take it tonight, I'm sure it will be someone else on Thursday. We're going home with two points and we're happy with that.

"This team (Los Angeles) was very hungry," defenseman Brett Clark said. "They had some good chances and put them in the net. We just had to come out in the third and fire everything we could at them."

Cloutier had 29 saves for the Kings, who were 2-for-4 on the power play.

Budaj stopped 8-of-9 shots he faced in the third period.

The Avalanche had a 2-1 lead after the first period on a power-play goal by Marek Svatos and a tally by Wojtek Wolski, who scored off a give-and-go with Ossi Vaananen. The goals were scored just 25 seconds apart off goaltender Dan Cloutier.