Patrick Roy: “We’ll win our share of games like this”

Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

The Colorado Avalanche lost to the Detroit Red Wings 4-2 last night. It was their first loss of the season and their first loss with Patrick Roy as their head coach. It puts their record at 6-1-0 for the season. Here’s what else we learned last night:

• It might be best to avoid hyping a regular season game that’s only seven games in, even if there are some great pictures of Roy fighting the Red Wings during his playing days. As Terry Frei writes in the recap of the game:

"The loss won’t end the Avalanche’s status as one of the biggest stories in the early weeks of the new season, but it injected a dose of reality into the proceedings. Johan Franzen’s second power-play goal of the game for the Red Wings broke a 2-2 tie at 7:10 of the third period, and Detroit — which also got two goals from Pavel Datsyuk — went on to the victory that made it 6-2 for the young season.”"

• Speaking of Roy, he continues to show that his time as head coach will be characterized by more than hype, shouting, and sound bites. If the Avs are successful under Roy, it will be because of actual coaching as much as it will be excitement and buzz because he ruffles the feathers of the rest of the league. He showed some good perspective on the loss after the game (quotes from the Denver Post):

"I thought our guys played very hard…It would have been very easy for them to give up after the first and we bounced back in the second period. . . It was a good game. It was fun to be part of it. Our fans, I think, were really into this one and I thank them for it…“We didn’t have the result, but I’m telling you, if we play a lot of games like this, we’re not going to lose that many,” he said. “We’ll win our share of games like this.”"

• I’m not so sure how interested I am in all of the talk about renewing this “rivalry,” but it sure appears that Altitude play-by-play man Mike Haynes harbors some form of ill-will towards certain of the Red Wings players (h/t Awful Announcing):

The Avs are back in action Saturday night in Buffalo against the Sabres.