The Colorado Avalanche didn't look like the historically awful team they've been all season on Saturday afternoon. They scored five times (incredibly, for the first time since opening night), answered the bell physically, and limited an ambitious Winnipeg Jets team to 24 shots in an eventual 5-2 triumph.

Colorado's first win in close to a month comes as a welcomed reprieve for a group of players who have indicated in recent weeks that it's become more and more difficult to come to the rink motivated.

However, they failed to completely shake that omnipresent discontent.

"We kind of showed why we had success early on in the season. It might make things even more frustrating because we can show what we can do," Matt Duchene said, according to Terri Frei of the Denver Post.

"We showed what we can do tonight, we beat a team that's desperate to stay in the playoff run and that's not an easy thing to do. We did a lot of good things, everyone pulled their weight tonight."

Duchene said it was the first time in a "long, long time" the Avs felt like a good team.

With the trade deadline less than four weeks away, the last-place Avalanche likely won't have many more opportunities to experience that feeling together.

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