NHL Hockey News

On Monday night, the Colorado Avalanche broke their nine-game road losing streak with a 4-2 win over the Minnesota Wild, who have now lost seven straight. The Avs fought back from two one-goal deficits before dominating the third period to get the win, and seemed to be energized by a big hit from forward Cody McLeod that knocked Minnesota’s Jared Spurgeon out of the game.

The hit earned McLeod a five-minute major penalty and a game misconduct, and really ticked off Wild coach Mike Yeo. “I didn’t like the hit one bit,” Yeo complained. “On top of that, to me, it seemed like something they were targeting. They hit him from behind two shifts before that and I thought that one could have been called too.”

Video of the hit:

Boston Bruins forward Rich Peverley won’t be playing in Friday’s home game against the Florida Panthers because the team wants him to get some rest for a nagging, undisclosed injury. The mystery injury is something that Peverley will have to deal with for the rest of the season, so sitting against the Panthers will buy him more than a full week of rest.

“We made the decision to go forward with the fact that he’s going to get basically a whole week before the next game and only miss one game,” explained Bruins coach Claude Julien. “That was the whole plan. Our schedule gets heavy after that, so this was a good time to take that approach.”

The Los Angeles Kings fired head coach Terry Murray, making him the fifth of the NHL’s 30 coaches to get canned so far this season. Murray led the team to the playoffs the past two seasons and leaves with the highest winning percentage (.560) in franchise history. However, the Kings have lost four straight and are off to a disappointing 13-12-4 start.

Replacing Murray on at least an interim basis is assistant John Stevens, who coached the Philadelphia Flyers from 2006-2009, a span that included an Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 2008. Kings general manager Dean Lombardi said the team had no timetable for bringing in a permanent head coach, adding “We’re looking at all of our options.”

The Chicago Blackhawks tied Sunday’s game with 66 seconds left in regulation, then beat the San Jose Sharks in overtime on a goal by Patrick Sharp. The Sharks led for more than half the game and outshot the Blackhawks 33-13 through the first 40 minutes, but seemed to run out of steam after the second intermission and were outshot 21-4 in the third period and overtime.

Sharks coach Todd McLellan blamed the schedule makers for his team’s loss. “It was pretty evident that one team have played three games in four nights and the other was fresh,” said McLellan. “We ran out of gas a little bit in the third and we lost a number of key faceoffs in the third period that allowed them to start with the puck and play in our end. That’s was a concern of ours, as well as obviously on the tying goal.”