Second-Period Avalanche Buries Red Wings

DETROIT — We interrupt the Red Wings’ dynastic run to report the Colorado Avalanche finally played as good a game as it talked, halting Detroit’s 11-game playoff winning streak and changing the complexion of their Western Conference semifinal series.

“Maybe they thought they were going to have an easy one since they won the first two at Colorado,” center Peter Forsberg said. “The second game we didn’t play well at all, and maybe they thought it would be even easier.”

With its season at stake, the Avalanche on Tuesday found the desperation and discipline players spoke of but rarely displayed in Denver. Powered by a three-goal burst in a two-minute, 15-second span in the second period that drove goaltender Bill Ranford to the bench, Colorado held off a late Detroit charge to grab a 5-3 victory at Joe Louis Arena, deflating a sellout crowd of 19,983 that seemed to consider the game a mere formality on the way to the Red Wings’ third consecutive Stanley Cup championship.

The Red Wings may have thought that would be the case too.

“We let up and they took advantage of it,” captain Steve Yzerman said. “We’ve got to play better.”

The Avalanche expressed the same sentiments after its two home losses--and Tuesday it put those words into action and guaranteed the series would return to McNichols Arena on Sunday for a fifth game.

Undaunted after Yzerman opened the scoring 7:07 into the game with his postseason-best ninth goal and hit the crossbar moments later, Colorado pulled even at the 11-minute mark when Claude Lemieux found himself alone at the left post to poke in a rebound during a two-man advantage. Theo Fleury gave Colorado a 2-1 lead when he pounced on the rebound of a shot by defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh at 16:59, but it was the foot soldiers, not the skill players, who helped Colorado improve its playoff road record to 4-0.

Veteran Dale Hunter, who played only three shifts in the first period, began the second-period scoring spree at 2:50 when his shot from the top of the left circle skipped between Ranford’s legs. Fifty-two seconds later, rookie Chris Drury converted the rebound of a shot by Aaron Miller that Ranford had stopped with his pad. Miller capped the frantic stretch at 5:05 with a dipping shot that glanced off Ranford’s glove.

“We kind of knew they weren’t invincible before. We just weren’t playing our best hockey,” said Drury, who joined Joe Sakic in recording their first points of the series.

That flurry spelled the end of the game for Ranford, who had been superb in place of the injured Chris Osgood in the first two games. Osgood, who sprained his knee in the clincher of Detroit’s first-round sweep of the Mighty Ducks, hasn’t practiced all-out and is doubtful for Game 4 Thursday at Detroit. Little-used third-stringer Norm Maracle stopped all 12 shots he faced Tuesday, but it’s likely Ranford will start Thursday.

“It’s tough,” Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman said in evaluating Ranford’s performance. “The first goal, we were two men short and it was a tap-in. There isn’t much you can do. He’s played well for us.”

Ranford was more critical than his coach.

“The last [goal] was terrible. Plain and simple, it was an awful goal,” Ranford said. “I was seeing the puck well. Hunter blew one by me, the next one was scored off a rebound and on [Miller’s goal] I was moving and it was dropping, and I just missed it.”

The Avalanche, sensing Ranford and the Red Wings were reeling, knew they couldn’t miss this opportunity to climb back into a series that threatened to end before they caught their collective breath.

“I think we finally learned we’re not going to go out there and beat the Detroit Red Wings if we take stupid penalties,” Miller said. “We just went out there and did our thing. . . . You need contributions from your slugs, the fourth line and the third line. For me to score, it’s a near-miracle. It takes a little pressure off our star players.”

Detroit applied considerable pressure late in the second period and throughout the third, but had limited success. Tomas Holmstrom lifted a rebound past Patrick Roy to cut Detroit’s deficit to 5-2 at 9:09 of the second period, but Roy stopped 20 shots in the third period. Only Vyacheslav Kozlov’s power-play goal eluded him, but that came with only 35 seconds to play and the stands more than half-empty.

“It was a good team effort,” Miller said. “It wasn’t the best 60 minutes of hockey we’ve played, but we needed this one.”