Blue Jackets 4, Avalanche 3, OT
DENVER -- Nick Foligno scored with 28.7 seconds left in overtime and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Colorado Avalanche 4-3 on Monday to keep their playoff push alive.
Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 29 shots and Mark Letestu, Blake Comeau and R.J. Umberger scored for the Blue Jackets, who have won four straight.
Cody McLeod had two goals and Jamie McGinn scored for Colorado.
Foligno won it when he came down the right side on an odd-man rush and beat Jean-Sebastien Giguere on the short side.
Elliot had given the Avalanche a 3-2 lead with a power-play goal at 17:58, but Umberger got a step on defenseman Tyson Barrie and beat Giguere between the pads to tie it with 1:27 left.
Gabriel Landeskog nearly won it early in the overtime but Bobrovsky stoned him on a short-handed breakaway chance.
The Blue Jackets need a strong finish to reach the postseason for just the second time in their history. They moved into ninth in the Western Conference and are tied in points with Detroit with 47, but the Red Wings have played one less game.
They got some help Monday when Dallas lost at Chicago.
Columbus has a tough finish at a time when two points in every game are precious. The win over Colorado came in the second game of a six-game road trip, and it was the only one of the six against a team out of the postseason picture.
Columbus hosts Nashville in the last game of the regular season.
Neither team generated much in the first half of the game, but things loosened up midway through the second. McLeod gave Colorado a 1-0 lead when he knocked in Landeskog's rebound at 10:57 of the second.
Columbus tied 1:38 later when Letestu one-timed a pass from Vinny Prospal.
The Blue Jackets took a 2-1 lead on Comeau's goal 2:32 into the third but the Avalanche tied it with 14:39 left.
It was McLeod's first two-goal game since Oct. 17, 2009, at Detroit. It's also the first time he's scored goals in consecutive games in four years.
NOTES: Columbus center Artem Anisimov was scratched with an upper-body injury suffered in Saturday's game against Minnesota. He's day to day. ... Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov was activated off the injured list. He missed the last week with a hip injury suffered during a morning skate on April 8. ... Colorado head coach Joe Sacco was named head coach of the 2013 U.S. Men's National Team on Monday. The team will participate in the 2013 International Ice Hockey Federation Men's World Championship May 3-19 in Helsinki, Finland, and Stockholm, Sweden. ... A winter storm that hit the Denver metro area affected attendance. Most sections of Pepsi Center were sparsely filled with fans. ... There were no penalties called in the first period.
