(Sports Network) - Marek Svatos scored the game-winner in the shootout of Colorado's 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings. Peter Budaj picked up the win after recording 27 saves for the Avalanche, who had won three in a row before dropping a recent home-and-home set to the Calgary Flames.

Paul Stastny and Wojtek Wolski each had a goal and an assist, while Milan Hejduk scored in regulation and in the shootout.

Patrick O'Sullivan, Dustin Brown and Alexander Frolov tallied for the Kings, who had won five of their previous seven. Erik Ersberg took the loss, logging 26 saves and getting beat twice in the shootout.

After neither team scored with an additional five minutes, Svatos pushed a backhander between Ersberg's pads, and, following Budaj's save against Brown, Hejduk ended it with a backhander of his own.

"You look at that game and we obviously didn't play as well as we would have liked in the second or the first, but we battled back and that's the key thing," Brown said. "A shootout loss is a shootout loss. It's fifty-fifty really. They had better shooters than we did. The bottom line was the shootout and it's an extra point for them."

Hejduk's ninth goal of the season on the power play with 2:50 to go in the first gave the Avs a 1-0 lead, but the visitors caught some bad luck when defenseman Adam Foote was buried into the boards by John Zeiler in the second period.

Foote's neck bent awkwardly where the glass starts on the boards and stayed on the ice before eventually skating off shakily on his own power. Zeiler was called for boarding and given a game misconduct, and Wolski scored on the ensuing power play for a 2-0 Colorado edge.

"I saw Foote on the ground and I kind of knew it wasn't a clean hit because he was hit from behind," Avs forward Ian Laperriere said. "We all jumped in there to back our teammate up. But those hits have to stop before someone gets hurt or even killed. Guys have to be smarter and it has to come from the players, the league can only do so much."

The Kings rallied with three straight goals. Frolov's slapshot from the left circle with a man advantage with 5:15 to play in the second got the Kings on the board, and O'Sullivan and Brown each lit the lamp in the span of 1:14 early in the third to go ahead.

Stastny's perfect deflection of Scott Hannan's pass tied the game, 3-3, for Colorado at the 4:31 mark of the third.

Game Notes

Budaj improved to 5-1-1 versus the Kings...LA was 1-for-7 on the power play, while Colorado scored twice on five tries with the extra man...It was Colorado's eighth straight shootout win.



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