Avalanched!

It was slightly worse than being Hurricaned!, hence - the two exlamation points. Sometimes, no matter what you do, the cards just don't fall in your favor. That was the case in Denver for the Bruins 4-2 loss against the Hurricanes.

Despite outshooting the Avs by nearly a two-to-one margin in the first period, the Bruins could only connect twice on goal. Andy McDonald scored his twenty-second of the season at 07:27, fed by Martin Havlat and Keith Tkachuk, and Pierre Turgeon added the deuce six minutes later.

From there, the wheels fell off the trailer home.

Sean Brown picked up an elbowing penalty thirty seconds after Turgeon's goal, and then Martin Havlat got a cheap goalie interference call. Both times, an Avalanche player picked up an offsetting penalty to open the ice to four-on-four, but the Bruins could not capitalize, closing the period up 2-0.

In the second period, the rumblings began. With the team outshot eleven to seven, Andrew Raycroft ceded two goals, one each to Brad Isbister and Peter Forsberg, in the first six minutes. Again, the scoring stopped and the penalties began, but still, the Bruins could not play the power play to their advantage, leaving the game tied at two-all at the end of forty minutes.

In the third, the whistle happy ways continued, still going in favor of the Bruins. Two early penalties against Bryan McCabe and Matt Pettinger saw the Bruins waste four minutes, empty handed. At 08:48, Keith Tkachuk was whistled for a goalie interference call that Chuck Kobasew played to perfection, scoring one minute and thirty seconds into to take the lead.

At 15:57, Lee Goren was fed up and took on Darius Kasparaitis, but the two could only muster a fight to the draw. The extra room on the ice, though, allowed Adam Foote to skate untouched to the front of the net, accept a Joni Pitkanan pass, and score the fourth and final Avalanche goal at 18:31 to seal the victory.

The home crowd of 13,279 cheered for the win and the sweep of game stars, (Peter Forsberg, Adam Foote, Manny Fernandez). The Bruins tucked their tails in and headed for Tampa Bay, hoping to extract some revenge for earlier losses.