New Players, Same Old Avs in Opening Night Victory By ALAN ROBINSON AP Sports Writer Thursday October 04, 2001 3:10 AM PITTSBURGH (AP) - It was only one night, one game of a season that won't end for nine more months. No matter, the Colorado Avalanche showed why good teams - make that championships teams - keep winning. When they lose stars, they replace them. After a preseason filled with questions about whether they had enough talent to replace the retired Ray Bourque and the sidelined Peter Forsberg, the Avalanche played a game reminiscent of their Stanley Cup run of last spring with a 3-1 victory over Pittsburgh on Wednesday night. In other opening night games, Ottawa beat Toronto 5-4 and Calgary defeated Edmonton 1-0. Vaclav Nedorost, a 19-year-old playing his first NHL game, and Chris Drury each had a goal and an assist for the Avalanche. Patrick Roy looked like he was back in Game 7 of the finals, turning aside 32 of 33 shots, many of them good ones as the Penguins outshot Colorado 14-6 in a scoreless first period. "They were all over us, especially in the first period," said Colorado's Joe Sakic, who also had a goal. "It seemed like we played the whole period in our end. Patrick made some huge saves and it seemed like once we got our legs, we played a pretty good defensive game." Which raises another question: Are the Penguins already missing Jaromir Jagr, the five-time scoring champion who was traded to Washington? "Don't even start with that," Penguins star Mario Lemieux said, cutting off the question almost before it could be asked. Kris Beech, a rookie obtained in the Jagr trade, played on Lemieux's line along with 400-goal scorer Stephane Richer, who is back after taking last season off. Both put shots off the post in the first period, when the Penguins easily could have scored two or three goals. ( After that, Lemieux had few good chances while finishing with a relatively low three shots in the Penguins' first game since 1989 without Jagr on the roster. "Obviously, Jaromir Jagr's a pretty good player," Sakic said. "It's a different team they've got, but they've still got a lot of talent and they will score their goals." Remarkably, it was Lemieux's seventh consecutive game without a goal, counting the final game of the Buffalo playoff series and the five-game Eastern Conference finals against New Jersey. It is one of the longest such streaks of his career. Lemieux, playing his first season opener in five years, credited Roy for the usually high-scoring Penguins' inability to put the puck in the net. "That's why he has over 400 wins," Lemieux said. It's 485 victories, to be exact, plus 137 more in the playoffs. Roy also is 23-8-6 against Pittsburgh, which is 0-7-1 at home against the Avalanche since they moved to Denver in 1995. Still, Pittsburgh was forcing the play until Nedorost scored on a power play at 1:51 of the second period, taking Steven Reinprecht's drop pass and wristing a shot that brushed goalie Johan Hedberg's pads. "You can't ask for anything more than that: first game, first goal," Sakic said. "He can just relax now, that takes the pressure off him. He's going to have a great career, because he's got a lot of talent." Nedorost, one of 10 players on Colorado's season-opening roster who weren't there for last year's opener, was the star of the Czech Republic's gold medal team in the world junior championships. "To get a goal in my first game, I would have to say I'm lucky," he said. Sakic scored later in the period, and Drury made it 3-0 at 8:12 of the third period. Pittsburgh went 0-for-5 on the power play and is 0-for-12 against Colorado the last two seasons. Wade Redden, Marian Hossa, Andre Roy, Radek Bonk and Todd White scored as Ottawa began the post-Alexei Yashin era with a victory in Toronto. The Senators, swept by Toronto in the first round of last season's playoffs, didn't need their former top scorer, who was traded to the New York Islanders in the offseason. Toronto's Alexander Mogilny, signed as a free agent, scored twice in his Maple Leafs debut. Mogilny had 43 goals for New Jersey last season. Mats Sundin and Gary Roberts also scored for Toronto. Toronto goalie Curtis Joseph, an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season, allowed five goals on 24 shots. Roman Turek made 24 saves in his Calgary debut, and Marc Savard scored the only goal at 6:13 of the third period. Visiting Edmonton was 0-for-9 on the power play as it opened a season for the first time in nine years without Doug Weight, the team's former captain who was traded to St. Louis.
