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Moose is Loose; Mikko Rantanen Makes Mockery of Time Off in Avs Rout of Chicago
Mikko Rantanen still does not know what it’s like to lose in regulation for any full game he’s played this season. He apparently also doesn’t know that you’re not supposed to be able to get four points in your first two periods back after not having played hockey in nearly six weeks.
Scoring four points with seemingly all the difficulty of buying a loaf of bread at a big supermarket, Rantanen returned to the Colorado Avalanche lineup in emphatic fashion, helping lead the Avs to a lopsided victory and a sweep of a barn-to-barn weekend series with the Chicago Blackhawks.
The Avs are now 8-0-1 in full games Rantanen has played. Rantanan’s stats in those nine full games: six goals, nine assists, 15 points.
Not bad.
Rantanen, though, did not play in the third period. This story will be updated soon, and I hope I don’t have some bad news for you. Was it just because it was 7-2 after two periods and the Avs wanted to keep his ice time limited the first game back? Let’s hope that’s it.
Rantanen’s goal, finishing off a great shift in which he deked his way around in the Chicago zone, made it a 5-1 game at 5:50 of the second period. By the time the Avs put their seventh goal of the game in the nets, Colorado had scored 12 times on the previous 43 shots against Chicago goaltending.
Nathan MacKinnon had another huge game, with a goal and two assists, giving him seven points for the two games this weekend. Nazem Kadri had two goals and Joonas Donskoi had two goals and an assist.
The Avs now will have a few days off between games, when they go east to play road games against Toronto, Montreal and Boston.
As reported earlier on this site, Gabe Landeskog and Matt Calvert skated this morning in regular jerseys. Might either of them return for the trip? We probably won’t know for a couple of days.
If they have anything half as good a first game back as Rantanen did in his, it could be quite the trip.
UPDATE: Here’s what Jared Bednar said when I asked about Rantanen: “Yeah, he’s fine.”
But Bednar also said: “He tweaked his leg a little bit, a couple times and started to get a little tired. So, I didn’t see any reason to bring him out for the third.”
Rantanen was not available to the media afterward, which was a little weird. Bednar isn’t one to tell falsehoods, so let’s just take his words for what they were/are.
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
- Rantanen started the game at left wing on a line with MacKinnon and Donskoi.
- Rantanen played 10:43 total.
- Sam Girard dropped the gloves in a rare fight, with Alex DeBrincat.
- The Avs will play Chicago twice more in the middle of next month, to wrap up their season series.
- Chicago got two 5-on-3 power-play advantages in the contest.
- A scout from the New Jersey Devils was at the game. There are rumors that the Devils are starting to listen to offers for potential UFA winger Taylor Hall.
- Here’s how MacKinnon described playing with Rantanen again: “He was unbelievable, as he usually is. He makes it way easier out there. Things just happen. Sometimes you just watch him with the puck. He’s one of the best players in the world.”
- Bednar said there is a chance Landeskog and Calvert could return on the next road trip.
- Next Avs practice won’t be until Monday.
- Here’s Jared Bednar’s postgame presser:
— Adrian Dater (@adater) December 1, 2019
NOTES AND QUOTES FROM AVS PR
TEAM NOTES
The Avalanche finished the month of November 8-6-0, going 8-3-0 over its last 11 contests after beginning the month 0-3-0. Colorado is now 8-3-1 at home this season, tied for the third-most home wins in the Western Conference.
Tonight’s game marked the fifth time this season that the Avs have scored six or more goals in a game. Colorado is averaging 3.73 goals per game, the best goals-per-game average in the NHL. The Avalanche swept a back-to-back set for the second time this season (also: Oct. 18-19) and is now 2-2-0 in the second game of back-to-back sets
in 2019-20.
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
Nathan MacKinnon notched three points (1g, 2a) to wrap up the month of November with 25 points (10g, 15a), the most points he has produced in any month of his career. MacKinnon’s 25 points this month is the most by an Avalanche player in a single month since Joe Sakic registered 26 points in March of the 1999-00 campaign. Peter Forsberg is the only other player since the team relocated to Denver to record 25 points in a month, accomplishing the feat in February of the 1995-96 season.
Nazem Kadri scored twice in the opening period and Joonas Donskoi scored twice in the second period, the seventh and eighth time this season Colorado has had a player with multiple goals in a single frame.
Ryan Graves extended his point streak to three games, a new career-best. He previously had point streaks of two games three times in his career, the last one coming Nov. 7-9, 2019.
Mikko Rantanen registered four points (1g, 3a) in his return to the lineup, his second game this season in which he’s registered three or more points (also: Oct. 14 at Washington).
Joonas Donskoi finished with a career-high four points (2g, 2a), surpassing his previous high of three points (4x – last: Nov. 12 at Winnipeg). Of the five games in his career where he has tallied three or more points, four have come this season (also: Nov. 12 at Winnipeg, Nov. 7 vs. Nashville and Oct. 18 at Florida). Donskoi’s first goal stood as the game-winner, his first game-winning goal of the season and the eighth of his career.
QUOTES
Colorado C Nathan MacKinnon
On Colorado RW Mikko Rantanen: “I think he’s just trying to work hard and he’s such an amazing player. I remember when he came back from his contract, came a little late to camp, his first practice on the ice he was the best player on the ice by a mile. It doesn’t take him much to get comfortable and I’m so happy to see him out there.”
On The Avs’ Performance: “We took advantage of some odd-man rushes, and I’m not sure what it was, I think it’s just a testament to us rather than their weaknesses.”
Colorado RW Joonas Donskoi
On His Line’s Performance: “Well obviously getting Mikko (Colorado RW Mikko Rantanen) back is helping us a lot. He’s an amazing player and was making great plays tonight, so we were able to find the back of the net tonight pretty good. I don’t know, it felt good.”
On Tonight’s Game: “We were able to find the scoring in the second. It’s been fun to see that even that we have a lot of guys out of the lineup, we still have the depth and the scoring and that we still have a lot of different guys scoring goals at least and a lot of guys with good confidence right now, so that has been carrying us the last couple of weeks.”
Colorado D Ian Cole
On Colorado RW Mikko Rantanen: “Yeah, he’s a pretty good player, huh? Easy game, just come out, two periods, four points. No, I mean he’s obviously a world-class player, elite player, superstar in this league and we’re obviously thrilled to have him back. You know, anytime you can get assets back – which we will here over the next couple of weeks – we’re only going to get better. So, if we can keep this team game together and continue to move forward, we’ll be in a good spot moving forward.”
On The Avs’ Depth: “It’s great to have depth. I mean, a ton of injuries and we still have guys stepping up and playing great hockey, so we’re certainly thrilled with this outcome tonight and over the past week, but it’s still only three games. There’s a lot of games left and we have to make sure we stay level-headed moving forward.”
Chicago G Robin Lehner
On Tonight’s Game: “It wasn’t going our way. I felt good, honestly, I felt good going out there. They just scored three pretty good ones real quick. They got kind of like a half breakaway with a screen and then a bounce and an unlucky redirection, and we are scrambling. It’s definitely not good enough from all of us, there’s not much to say about it.”
On The Team’s Performance: “We were not playing well, the score was 7-3. That’s the frustrating part, you know, if we weren’t good enough, I wouldn’t care. Just shake it off for the next game, you know, it is what it is. We’ve shown that we can play, we just have to decide to play the right way all of the time. We can’t just go chasing the offense and just totally forget about the defense. The defense is the most important part, and we have really good, skilled offensive players here who can counterattack when the other team makes mistakes, but we seem to get in trouble when we try to throw too much at them and we don’t do the things that make us successful consistently enough. It’s just time to look ourselves in the mirror and just do the right things, that’s kind of what it is all about. It’s on us as players to do the right things.”
Chicago RW Alex DeBrincat
On The Second Period: “[We made] a few mistakes here and there and they’re in the back of our net. We did the same thing yesterday, we go down a few goals and it’s hard to battle back. The second period obviously wasn’t pretty, and we’ve just got to be better all around.”
On His Fight With Colorado D Samuel Girard: “I was frustrated, I think. I had just missed an empty net a few seconds before, we went in the corner and he gave me a little hit and you know, I was just frustrated I think and it just kind of happened.”
