The Colorado Avalanche head home with the hope of taking firm command of their conference quarterfinal set tonight when they welcome the Dallas Stars to the Pepsi Center for Game 3.

The Avs posted a 5-2 win in Saturday's Game 1, before Monday's 5-4 overtime tilt. In Game 2, Joe Sakic scored 4:36 into overtime to lift the seventh seed, as the Colorado captain netted his NHL-record seventh career overtime winner in the playoffs..

Milan Hejduk posted a goal and three assists while Brett Clark forced overtime with a late third-period marker for the Avalanche. Goaltender Jose Theodore made 21 saves in the victory.

Colorado won Monday's game after blowing a 3-0 lead and falling behind 4-3.

Jere Lehtinen had a pair of tallies and Mike Modano added a goal and an assist for Dallas, while goaltender Marty Turco allowed five goals on 23 shots.

The Avalanche enter Game 3 with history on their side, as they are 12-2 in playoff sets when winning the first two games.

The Stars' franchise, meanwhile, has been down two games to none 11 times, and have won only one of those series. The lone occurrence came in 1968 -- the Minnesota North Stars' first-ever postseason.

Dallas hopes to carry over its strong road play from the regular season to get back in this series. The Stars were 25-12-4 away from home in 2005-06, setting a franchise mark for away victories.

Game 4 will be played Friday at the Pepsi Center.

Only a freak alignment of the stars will keep the Avalanche out of the playoffs for the first time since the team moved to Denver in 1995.

Vancouver's 5-4 overtime loss Wednesday night to San Jose kept the door open for a crazy but highly unlikely scenario to knock out the Avs.

The only way Colorado misses the playoffs is if Vancouver takes the upper hand in the fourth tiebreaker - goal differential between the teams, which currently favors the Avs by 29 goals.

It would take an epic performance by the Canucks to leapfrog the Avalanche. Here's why:

If the Avalanche goes 0-3 in regulation and Vancouver goes 2-0, both teams would have 43-31-8 records.

The teams would have the same number of points (94) and wins (43) and each would have nine points against the other in the season series.

Thus, it would go to the fourth tiebreaker: goal differential, where the Avs are at plus-31 and the Canucks at plus-2.

On the flip side, the Avs can still make it up to the No. 3 seed. If the Avs win out, starting with tonight's game at Calgary, and the Flames lose their last three games in regulation, the teams would be tied at 100 points. The Avs would win the Northwest Division with 46 wins to the Flames' 45.

Confused yet?

"For the last 25 games or so, it seems like we've said each one was the biggest game of the year to that point," Avs coach Joel Quenneville said after Tuesday night's victory against Phoenix. "Well, (tonight's) game is no different. The priority is still getting in the playoffs, then getting as high as we can. We've got to go into Calgary, where we haven't fared too well (0-3) so far."

The fear of not making the playoffs for the first time in Avs history has diminished, but nobody around the team wants to finish eighth and have to go to Detroit for Games 1 and 2 of the first round.

"This is a huge trip, no matter what," Avs veteran Ian Laperriere said. "It's going to be a battle like it's been for the past two months. It's not going to be a big difference from what it's been. Every game has been so important."

Quenneville said goalie Jose Theodore likely will start tonight, and probably will start against Vancouver and Edmonton. Theodore has allowed seven goals in his first two appearances with Colorado, including three in the third period Tuesday. But Quenneville isn't concerned.

"I thought both games he looked sharp," Quenneville said. "I know (Phoenix) got some deflections that were fortunate. His play on the 5-on-3s (early in the game) was a great illustration of what he's capable of."

Theodore said he has no pain in his previously injured right heel. He is excited to be part of the biggest weekend of the season, especially in his native country, where he was no stranger to pressure.

"It's fun. This is the best part of the season," Theodore said. "I feel really comfortable with the guys on this team. We just have to have a playoff approach to these games, starting with Calgary."

Laperriere said Theodore's presence on the trip gives the team plenty of confidence.

"He's looked sharp to me," Laperriere said. "He's the kind of guy that can handle this kind of pressure. He always had that back in Montreal, for 10 years. It's just that maybe it went a little bit overboard this year."

 

For 59 minutes, the Colorado Avalanche were on their way to a bad loss. The final 58 seconds of regulation changed all that.

Dan Hinote and Rob Blake scored in the last minute, and the Avalanche moved within three points of the Northwest Division lead with a 4-3 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday night.

"This was big because we needed these points," Blake said. "I got a power play at the end and Danny made a strong move down the wall, put the puck to the net and it went in."

Blake scored two goals and became the 17th NHL defenseman to score 200. Andrew Brunette added a goal, and Joe Sakic had three assists.

Calgary lost one point off its division lead by falling in a shootout to Detroit at home Monday. Both the Flames and Avalanche have seven games remaining. Colorado will play its final three games on the road.

"It was a tremendous sense of relief to see the last goal go in," Colorado coach Joel Quenneviile said. "We were thinking before if we could get it to overtime, then we get a free point and then we got a really lucky break after that."

Curtis Brown, Patrick Sharp and Rene Bourque had goals for the Blackhawks, who are out of playoff contention.

"We made a generous gift to them," goalie Nikolai Khabibulin said. "They really needed one and we gave it to them."

Brown gave Chicago a 3-2 lead with 5:21 left in the third when he took a centering pass from Bourque from behind the net and sent a backhander over goaltender Peter Budaj's glove.

But with 2:03 remaining, Michal Barinka was sent off for cross-checking. Blake tied it 3-3 at 19:03, sending the puck through a pileup in front of the net and past Khabibulin.

Hinote scored from a tough angle after Sakic had dumped the puck into Chicago's zone. Hinote skated along the right boards and sent a shot off the back of Khabibulin's right pad and into the net with 12 seconds left.

"I only get the lucky ones," Hinote said. "I knew there was about 15 seconds left so I just wanted to throw it to the net and maybe get a faceoff down there. I wasn't trying to score from there."

"He's right," Khabibulin said of Hinote's goal. "That puck shouldn't go in. I'll take the blame for that one."

Chicago outshot Colorado 9-6 in the first period and showed some grit after Khabibulin gave up a rebound goal to Blake at 5:09. Sakic's wrist shot was stopped but the puck bounced right to Blake, who tapped it in for his first of the night.

Sharp took a pass from Mikael Holmqvist and ripped a slap shot from the upper right circle at 7:13 of the period for his 12th of the season.

Bourque gave Chicago a 2-1 lead when he scored between Budaj's pads at 8:13. Brunette tied it with a power-play goal at 13:34.

"It's tough to play teams like this," Blake said. "They are playing for their jobs and they come after you."

Brown countered, "We have been through a lot this year. The effort was there, but unfortunately, something weird happened, and we don't get anything out of a good performance."

Guy Lafleur didn't have to be polite about it. But he was. While rooming on the road with a young Quebec Nordiques center, Lafleur always stepped into the hotel room's bathroom and shut the door before he lit up his cigarette.

"To me, it didn't matter," Colorado Avalanche captain Joe Sakic said with a laugh, years later. "I mean, what am I going to say to him? You see him come to your team, and you remember watching him flying out there against Boston and everybody. I was nervous at first to be around him, but he's a great guy. He was so nice to me, a good teammate."

This week, Sakic scored his 561st career goal in a Colorado victory over Calgary to pass Lafleur and take sole possession of the 18th spot on the NHL's all-time goal-scoring list. Before passing Lafleur, he also jumped past Maurice Richard, Michel Goulet, Ron Francis and Johnny Bucyk this season.

At 1,552 points, 36-year-old Sakic is No. 12 on the all-time list, and he has overhauled Dale Hawerchuk, Doug Gilmour, Adam Oates and Bryan Trottier in 2005-06. "Young Joe just doesn't want to get old," Trottier, a fellow former Swift Current Bronco, said from his home in the Pittsburgh area.

Among other things, what it all means is that Sakic will continue to pass retired players whose names -- and summoned memories of their play -- remind him not only that he has illustrious company but also that the calendar pages are turning.

"It's more that I'm honored," Sakic said. "It's an honor to, first, be around this long, and if you're getting to these guys, you know you're getting old, too. You're not going to catch these guys quick; you have to have longevity. Looking back and realizing you used to watch these guys, catching them is a special feeling."

That's not blowing smoke.

Sakic's two-goal night against the Flames ended a 10-game scoring drought for him. That streak of frustration again raised the issue of whether his up-and-down season -- especially in the wake of the altered rules and obstruction standards -- has been underachievement for a team trying to compensate for the loss of Peter Forsberg to unrestricted free agency and the Flyers.

The biggest change is that Sakic now more often sees the opposition's top -- and most physical, albeit under the new standards -- defensive pairing. Through 50 games, Sakic is at a point-per-game clip with 19 goals and 31 assists; Alex Tanguay, now playing left wing on the second line with Ian Laperriere and Brett McLean, is leading the Avalanche with 58 points.

"I've missed a lot of chances," Sakic said. "But I've felt good on the ice."

The catch to any assessment of Sakic's up-and-down season is that the Avalanche have scored the most goals in the Western Conference and are second only to the Senators overall. So even in the first season without the pick-the-poison, one-two punch of marquee centers, scoring hasn't been the Colorado problem as much as substandard goaltending (at least early in the season) and sometimes chaotic play in its own end.

"I haven't changed the way I play the game or my approach," Sakic said. "It was the same when [Forsberg] was here and now. You just do the best you can and that's it. You miss a guy like that who can dominate any game when he's feeling good, and that's great to watch. That rubs off on everybody. We don't have him now, but my approach is the same.

"It's different now. The league isn't being played the same way now, and that definitely helps. You're not always seeing checking lines anymore. We're seeing a lot of our line" -- at even strength, Sakic is playing with rookie phenom Marek Svatos and Antti Laaksonen -- "against the other top lines, especially at home. It would be easier to compare now and then if we were still playing in the same league as before."

Colorado coach Joel Quenneville hasn't had the luxury of having Sakic and Forsberg as a head coach, but he served as an assistant under Marc Crawford when the Nordiques and Avalanche had both.

"I don't know if this has changed the challenge for Joe," Quenneville said. "I think Joe has done a nice job and he's handled the situation pretty well. Productionwise, we've had some contributions from a lot of people we weren't sure about. We haven't had to rely just on Joe. In the past, the opposition probably was concerned about who they would cover, who they would check. And Joe a lot of times has taken the brunt of that. He's handled that situation fine, but I think it alleviates some pressure on other guys.

"Joe's adjusted to whatever situation he has had. He's played with a number of wingers and line combinations, and he's handled whatever the other team has put in front of him."

This is all playing out against Sakic's looming duty as Canada's Olympic captain, four years after he was the tournament MVP in his nation's gold-medal victory at Salt Lake City.

"In Canada, it doesn't matter whether you have a 'C', an 'A' or nothing," Sakic said. "We're expected to win, so to me, the pressure is the same. It's more an honor and a privilege to be able to wear the 'C.'"

Sakic's father, Marijan, and wife, Debbie, will be in Torino, watching Joe play, while Joe's mother, Slavica, comes to Denver to babysit 5-year-old twins Chase and Kamryn. For Marijan, it will be a return to his native continent, where he was born in Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia) during World War II. A stonemason by trade, Marijan decided to flee oppression and a dark future by sneaking across the border into Austria, then traveling to Canada. The funny part: He landed in Quebec City, then went across country to Vancouver, where Joe was born in 1969. (The NHL records saying Sakic was born in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby are incorrect.)

That's a heartening story of emigration, ethnic diversity in a new nation and assimilation. The man wearing the "C" in Torino spoke Croatian as a young boy and initially was shy in school because of it. (He is also a huge fan of the Seattle Seahawks and Mariners, and he still sounds like a 12-year-old when the subject of the Super Bowl comes up.)

He started playing hockey, getting his big chance when his parents scraped together $300 so their daughter, Rosemarie, could figure skate at the North Shore Club. The membership allowed brothers Joe (to this day, he is "Joey" to his parents) and Brian to skate, as well, and begin their development. Also, Marijan built a miniature rink in the backyard.

So, if Sakic can last long enough to play for Canada in 2010 at Vancouver, the native son will come full circle.

"Right now, I don't know," Sakic said. "People brought it up to me early in the year, but I'd like to get in a couple more seasons and then see. I just want to see how I feel and how I'm playing. Am I shooting for it? No."

First up: Torino.

The San Jose Sharks sit last in the NHL's Pacific Division. An eight-point crevice separates them from the eighth-place Colorado Avalanche for the last playoff spot.

Yet, Western Conference teams still hear the "Jaws" theme, which grew louder after the Sharks acquired center Joe Thornton from the Boston Bruins in December. People are a bit nervous.
"They were picked as one the three top teams in the Western Conference and that was before they acquired Joe Thornton," said King Coach Andy Murray, whose team has a double-digit point lead on the Sharks, yet lost four of five games to them.

The other people who appear a little edgy are the Sharks.

They have a 15-7-3 record since getting Thornton, yet have gained only a point on a playoff spot in that time.

"Sooner or later, if we keep letting games slip away, we're not going to be able to say we can still get into [the playoffs]," team captain Patrick Marleau said.

The Sharks' play in January has at times reminded everyone — including themselves — that this was a team that reached the conference finals in 2003-04, the last time the NHL played a season.

But the Sharks' trouble remains their streaky nature. Earlier this month, they ran off five consecutive victories to close within four points of eighth place, then gave back that ground by losing four of six.

"We've given away a lot of points we would like to have," said forward Scott Thornton, Joe's cousin. "I wouldn't say we are frustrated. I'd say we're disappointed and a little upset."

The roots of the Sharks' problems are in net.

Evgeni Nabokov, considered among the NHL's best, has struggled at times, partly because of groin and shoulder injuries. Vesa Toskala, who was so well thought of that the Sharks traded Miikka Kiprusoff to Calgary in 2003-04, has also battled a groin problem and his play has been inconsistent.

Both are unrestricted free agents at the end of this season, which may lead to one of the two being traded.

The Sharks, an NHL team official said, talked with the Tampa Bay Lightning about swapping Nabokov for a veteran defenseman two weeks ago. The trade speculation gained speed when Nabokov sat out the Sharks' game against the Lightning on Jan. 16. The story was Nabokov had a sore groin, and goaltender Nolan Schaefer was recalled from the minors. Nabokov, though, declined to acknowledge the injury to reporters the next day, saying, "I feel fine."

The deal seemingly fizzled and Schaefer was sent to the minors days later.

"Sometimes, I question the actual sanity of some of this stuff," Shark Coach Ron Wilson said. "There are [teams] who try to gain advantage by saying some stuff that is absurd."

Wilson, though, did point to goaltending as the cause of the Sharks' early-season problems.

"Each tried to play games with sore groins, which ended not being a smart move. It hurt the team," Wilson said "Now they caught up physically."

Whether the Sharks, who play the Mighty Ducks twice this week, can catch up in the standings remains to be seen.

The Sharks have no one to blame but themselves. They lost 10 consecutive games in November, which resulted in the trade for Thornton.

"Frankly, I was surprised where the team was when I got here," Thornton said. "They were picked as one of the top teams and I knew there was a lot of talent here."

On a team ranked second in the NHL in scoring, the Colorado Avalanche's most productive player isn't speedy Alex Tanguay, soft-handed Milan Hejduk or even Joe Sakic.

It's 23-year-old Marek Svatos, who is quietly proving to be one of the league's top rookies while helping the Avs steadily climb the standings.

Svatos has 29 goals this season, seven more than Tanguay and 10 more than Sakic. His 44 points put him third on a team that has closed in on the Northwest Division lead. Colorado trails division leader Calgary by three points.

During a recent eight-game winning streak, Svatos had his second hat trick of the season against St. Louis.

"He's a threat every night. He's got jump, he's got energy," Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville said. "I think that's a great compliment for a young kid: knowing that each and every night (the team is) getting something from him."

The Avalanche had high expectations for Svatos after his short stint with the team during the 2003-04 season. He injured his shoulder in the second game of the season. But when he returned, he scored three goals in two regular season and 11 playoff games, including the winning goal in Game 4 of the first round against Dallas.

Svatos didn't waste any time this season: He scored his first NHL hat trick in Colorado's home opener Oct. 10 against the Calgary Flames.

Svatos, a native of Slovakia, said that game was his most important this season.

"That was a good start of the season, so I think that helped me," Svatos said. "I got a little bit of confidence."

Svatos' teammates call him a "pure" and "natural" scorer, someone unafraid of crashing the net or setting himself up on the crease and risking the abuse to angle for the best position.

"When he gets the puck in those areas, he usually scores," forward Dan Hinote said.

Svatos said it's not his style to wait for something to happen on the ice.

"I'm always trying to be in the middle of plays," he said. "I want the puck."

Not only is Svatos getting the puck where he wants it, he tends to score when the Avalanche need him to. He leads the NHL with eight game-winning goals this season, including four in the third period.