VANCOUVER - Aside from winning at home, not much else is going right for the Colorado Avalanche.
The Avalanche haven't won a game on the road so far this season, and have only scored once in the past three games while conceding 11 goals.
But it's the dreadful power play that is "killing us right now," according to forward P.A. Parenteau, who leads the team with three goals.
The Avalanche went 0 for 4 with the man advantage in a 3-0 loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night, with Parenteau admitting afterwards he could have done more.
"I thought we played a decent first period, but our power play sucked the life out of us," he said. "We didn't do very well, I take a lot of the blame for that.
"We didn't generate enough again and we've got to find our strides on the power play, that was the name of the game again today."
After six games, the Avalanche are 1 for 19 with the man advantage, but 0 for 12 on the road.
"It's killing us right now," Parenteau said. "Plain and simple, it's been our Achilles heel."
Colorado head coach Joe Sacco had some ideas about how to get it going, which can't come soon enough for his team ahead of a clash against rested Calgary on Thursday night.
"Shoot the puck," he quipped. "Shoot the puck. That's how we fix it, we're way too cute right now, way too fancy right now.
"But we'll fix that, we'll get it fixed."
Trailing 2-0 with 3:49 left in the second period, the Avs had a 5-on-3 chance for 1:25, but they failed to capitalize.
"Usually when you don't score on an opportunity like that, it will come back to haunt you," Sacco said. "But we've just got to stick with it, the guys are working hard.
"We've got to find a way to put some pucks behind the other team's goalie though."
Centre Matt Duchene added he is just hoping the team's fortunes turn around.
"We've just got to keep putting pucks in the net, and work it down low and possess it," said Duchene. "Stay with the course, I mean eventually it is going to go in, we're going to fill the net, we're going to get six or seven goals one game, it's just going to happen, it's the way hockey goes.
"It can't go on like this forever, so we've just got to stay with it and not get too negative."
With captain Gabriel Landeskog out indefinitely with head and leg injuries and Steve Downie (knee) out for the rest of the season, could Colorado ramp up its negotiations with restricted free agent Ryan O'Reilly to help stop this scoring funk?
Sacco refused to bite.
"I've talked about that at length," he said. "It's a situation that's between our general manager and Ryan and his representatives."
