DENVER (AP) -- Before Manny Legace blew out the candles, he shut out
the Avalanche.

Legace, who turned 33 Saturday, handed Colorado its first shutout of
the season, leading Detroit past the Avalanche 3-0 at the Pepsi Center.

"I finally won one on my birthday," Legace said. "I've been playing
games on my birthday all my life and lost them all -- until this one."

Legace (22-6-2) stopped 28 shots. His fourth shutout of the season and
10th of his career left just three teams who haven't been blanked this
year: Detroit, Dallas and San Jose.

The Red Wings are 3-0 against the Avalanche this season, but unlike
their first two meetings, when they combined for 17 goals, this one
was dominated by defense and missed opportunities on the power play.

Detroit, ranked No. 2 in the league in penalty killing, killed off all
seven of Colorado's power plays.

"The power play was terrible," Avs captain Joe Sakic said. "We didn't
support one another that well. ... I don't think we generated hardly
any chances on the power play."

Ten shots to be exact.

"Every time we got the power play, we didn't do anything," lamented Sakic.

Through the first two periods, Colorado managed just five shots in
five power plays, drawing the ire of the Pepsi Center crowd. The Avs
finally put some life into their fans when they got off three shots on
their sixth power play but again Legace kept them from putting the
puck into the net.

Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville was stumped over his suddenly
scuffling power play unit.

"It's been good all year, but the last two games it has really
struggled. We have given away three points in two games, and it was
the difference tonight," Quenneville said. "We lost a little bit of
our momentum in the game in the second period by missing four
opportunities, and that was clearly the difference.

"They are on a roll defensively, killing penalties. Their PK is very
smart, they anticipate well and move well together and they were
really disruptive on our entries, and we didn't have enough puck
presence on our dumps and retrievals and they really frustrated us
tonight."

Shortly after killing the Avs' sixth power play, Detroit broke the
scoreless tie with Dan Cleary's third goal of the season. He took a
nifty pass out of the right corner from Henrik Zetterberg and pushed
it past David Aebischer (20-12-2), who had stopped the first 21 shots
he faced, at 5:40 of the third period.

Cleary said it was a bit of a lucky break.

"I was open because both teams were changing," Cleary said. "The puck
was loose and the puck ended up with us. Zetterberg got it and I shot
it through the legs. ... We showed so much patience, but we were
frustrated, too, for two periods. There were penalties, but you didn't
see them score any goals."

After a Brad May turnover, Tomas Holmstrom picked up the puck and
dished it to Mikael Samuelsson, whose wrist shot from the upper left
circle at 10:01 made it 2-0, and Robert Lang's breakaway goal capped
the scoring at 18:29, sending the fans streaming to the exits.

"The boys gave me a great gift," Legace said. "Three goals in the
third period."

Notes

Colorado's Kurt Sauer replaced Ossi Vaananen as Patrice Brisebois's
defense partner. Vaananen, who led Colorado with a plus-10 rating, had
an operation Friday to repair his right ankle, which he broke the
night before at Nashville. ... Avs F Milan Hejduk, who hurt his neck
Thursday night, is expected to return to the ice Tuesday night against
Edmonton.

Boxscore
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/boxscore?gid=2006020417