For the second-straight outing, the Avalanche held a lead going into the final period, only to see it erased and then forced to climb out of a late deficit. Colorado led 2-1 at the second intermission on Saturday versus the Nashville Predators but ended up losing by one.
"We're not letting things get off the rails," Duchene said. "We're doing things to get the lead, but that's the next step as a team is trying to finish these games and it sucks right now."
Head coach Jared Bednar echoed the players' sentiment that to play so well and then lose the lead in the third period is frustrating.
"We're playing a good hockey game," Bednar said. "I thought the game was a lot of fun to that point, the first two periods; both teams playing hard, a lot of action. The fans were into it, both sides, you know what I mean. Good, hard-fought two periods, and then you make some mistakes and they put it in the back of the net, and it's game over."
Bednar said he liked what he saw from his top two lines, but it was his bottom six that was the difference. Colorado's third and fourth lines were on the ice for every goal against, except for Chicago's game-sealing empty-net marker with 11 seconds remaining.
"I thought our top guys were really good tonight. They were jumping and moving and creating chances and creating goals. Both of those lines," Bednar said. "But our third and fourth lines were not good enough. They got scored on five times. The top guys played more minutes, and they were good tonight. The bottom two lines didn't get the job done."