Avs blast Red Wings

Archived from 1998-99 season.

1999 Playoffs

Detroit-Colorado
series

Detroit
Red Wings

Colorado
Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche returned to life at the nick of time ending the Detroit Red Wings' playoff winning streak with a 5-3 victory Tuesday night.

"Do or die. We played so bad in the first two. Well the first game was all right but the second game was awful. If you don't win this one then you're in trouble," Miller said. "Our backs were against the wall, we had to let it all hang out tonight."

The Avalanche, 4-0 on the road in the playoffs, scored on five of their first 23 shots on Red Wings' starting goalie Bill Ranford, who was replaced with Norm Maracle at 5:05 of 2nd period.

"I'm just disappointed," Ranford said. "But, you play this game 27 years and I guess you expect nights like this once in a while."

The Red Wings still have a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 second-round series which continues Thursday at Joe Louis Arena. Game 5 will be Sunday back in Denver.

"Going down 3-0 would have been awful, but this win just means that Game 4 is just as important," Hunter said.

Steve Yzerman started scoring in the first period but Claude Lemieux and Theo Fleury gave Colorado a 2-1 lead before the period was over. The Avalanche blew the game open with goals from Miller, Hunter and Chris Drury in the first 5:05 of the second period.

"We finally got a couple rebounds by crashing the net," Avalanche center Peter Forsberg said. "They really didn't give us much ice to work with until it got to be 5-1, but we did a good job of going to the net.


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