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Avalanche roster

"You don't see what happened tonight happen often," Colorado's coach Bob Hartley said. "A coach likes to talk about character and determination, and that is what this team displayed in the third period."

Pave Bure scored a hat trick for Florida, before sitting out the third period nursing a sore knee. Florida had a 5-0 lead in the second period, but then Forsberg started Colorado's comeback with a goal at 18:11.

"No, I haven't seen anything like this before," Florida coach Terry Murray said. "This is the biggest meltdown I've ever seen. Absolute, total embarrassment."

The Avalanche seemed lethargic without newly acquired right wing Theo Fleury, who is out indefinitely with a sprained right knee, but all that changed with seven unanswered goals.

"Which coach would you like to speak to, the first and second period coach or the guy who coached the third?" joked Hartley. "This game has got to be a lesson for us. We must start the game with the kind of intensity that we finished with tonight."

"After our sixth goal was disallowed with a man in the crease, that was the crack in the door I think they talked about on their bench," Murray said. "That was a disappointing goal."