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Arnason, Svatos each score twice as Avalanche pound Oilers

Dec 1, 2006 - 4:44 AM EDMONTON, Alberta (Ticker) -- Once Tyler Arnason and the Colorado Avalanche got going, everything snowballed on the Edmonton Oilers.

Arnason and Marek Svatos both scored twice and defenseman John-Michael Liles had a goal and two assists as the Avalanche erupted for a 7-3 victory over the Oilers.

Paul Stastny and Milan Hejduk also tallied for Colorado, which had not scored more than four goals in any of its last nine games. The Avalanche also had dropped their first two meetings with the Oilers this season but rebounded in impressive fashion Thursday.

"We should score more than we have been (lately)," Arnason admitted. "But we did tonight, and that's nice to get."

While it was all smiles in the Avalanche locker room, the Oilers kept their doors closed for 14 minutes following the contest. Coach Craig MacTavish understandably was not pleased his team's effort.

"You can call it whatever you want to call it," he said. "It was an upsetting game from a lot of standpoints, especially early. Even if you're struggling offensively, that's one thing. But we were cutting a lot of corners in some tough areas of the game that normally we're pretty solid at. Our checking in the neutral zone was lackluster, casual and lazy."

Stastny snapped a 2-2 tie with 3:42 left in the first period, beating netminder Dwayne Roloson on a deflection for the seventh goal of his rookie campaign. Arnason scored on a one-timer from the left faceoff circle less than two minutes later.

"(Arnason) had a special game and it was nice to see some offense," Colorado coach Joel Quenneville said. "We haven't seen a lot of that this year, so hopefully we can put something together off of that."

Hejduk's power-play goal - the only one of the game for the Avalanche - made it 5-2 just 34 seconds into the second period. Svatos tacked on two more tallies - on a rebound and a breakaway - to push the advantage to 7-2 early in the final session.

Roloson surrendered the first six goals on only 20 shots before being replaced midway through the second period. He had allowed a total of 12 tallies in seven contests prior to this one.

"Roloson wasn't god-like tonight," MacTavish said. "So it exposed a lot of the mistakes that we have been getting away with because of our best player."

Brett McLean, captain Joe Sakic and defenseman Ken Klee combined for seven assists and Peter Budaj made 21 saves as Colorado won for the fifth time in seven games.

"Yeah, (the offensive outburst) was (overdue)," said Klee, who set up three goals. "Guys have been fighting it a little bit. We know we have guys that can score for us, it's more being worried about keeping it out of our net, and we preach that every day.

"With as much skill as we have up front, we know that we can score goals. But this was a big confidence boost for the guys to start getting a few."

Joffrey Lupul, Ryan Smyth and Jarret Stoll scored for the Oilers, who have lost two straight following a five-game winning streak.

"We made a lot of errors," Edmonton captain Jason Smith said. "We turned the puck over a lot and couldn't get it out of our end. We just weren't good defensively, and when you play that way, you don't win."