Avalanche top Red Wings on Comeau's shootout goal

DETROIT -- Blake Comeau scored in regulation and got the deciding goal in the fourth round of the shootout to give the Colorado Avalanche a 3-2 win against the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena on Friday.
Nathan MacKinnon scored in the third round of the tiebreaker for Colorado after Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk beat Semyon Varlamov in the second round. Varlamov stopped Gustav Nyquist's wrist shot to begin the fourth round before Comeau beat Detroit goaltender Petr Mrazek for the win.

Matt Duchene and Comeau scored for Colorado (29-25-4), and Varlamov made 43 saves.
"He was phenomenal for us," Avalanche coach Patrick Roy said of his goaltender. "We had back-to-back games and got in late last night. Not trying to find an excuse, but they're a good puck-possession team. Our goalie needed to be our best player for us to win and he was."
Colorado won 4-3 at the Ottawa Senators on Thursday. Varlamov made 26 saves in that game.
"He came to me and said, 'I'm going to play you tomorrow night,'" Varlamov said when asked about finding out from Roy that he was playing two nights in a row. "And I said, 'I'm ready.' "

Defenseman Jonathan Ericsson and Datsyuk scored for Detroit (28-18-9), which had its three-game winning streak ended. Justin Abdelkader had two assists and Mrazek finished with 19 saves.
"I thought we played really good. I thought we did tons of really good things." Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. "We always talk about process, I thought from a process standpoint we were, in a lot of ways, excellent, to be honest with you. I thought our energy level was great, I thought we won tons of puck races and puck battles in the [offensive] zone, I thought we shot the puck well, we had net presence. The puck just didn't go in as much we would have liked it to."
Detroit outshot Colorado 45-21 and attempted 87 shots to 35 for the Avalanche.
"We had a bad first period, weren't that good in the second period but I thought we played better in the third," MacKinnon said.

Varlamov made a spectacular save on Nyquist's backhand shot as he came in off left wing and cut across in front of the crease three minutes into overtime.
"Varlamov made some good saves when he had to there," Abdelkader said.
Detroit's Dylan Larkin hit the post in the first minute of overtime.
Datsyuk tied the game 2-2 with a power-play goal 9:51 into the third period. He put a backhand shot from just outside the crease past Varlamov for his ninth goal. Defenseman Mike Green started the play when he knocked the puck out of the air with his stick just inside the Colorado blue line on a clearing attempt.

Comeau gave the Avalanche a 2-1 lead 5:30 into the third period when his shot from the high slot got through Mrazek. It was Comeau's ninth goal.
Ericsson tied the game 1-1 at 4:09 of the second period with a screened wrist shot from the point that skipped past Varlamov. It was Ericsson's second goal of the season.
Colorado was outshot 13-4 in the first period, but the Avalanche got the only goal when Duchene scored his 25th of the season at 9:27. Duchene was at the bottom inside edge of the right circle when he took a pass from behind the net from Mikhail Grigorenko and beat Mrazek.
Green returned after missing two games with a sore groin.