Postgame Avalanche-Devils: Mikko officially out of slump

NEWARK, N.J. – Last year, it was Gabe Landeskog who got a free couple of hats, courtesy of appreciative Avalanche fans here in New Jersey. Mikko Rantanen prefers ski hats when he dons a chapeau, but he didn’t mind seeing the couple of baseball caps that were deposited onto the Prudential Center ice at the end of Saturday’s game with the Devils.

A couple of days ago, Rantanen was being talked about in less-than-usual circumstances, after being dropped to the third line by coach Jared Bednar. The play by Rantanen since seems to suggest: “Message, received.”

Rantanen’s hat trick powered the Avs to a 5-2 victory over the Devils, and he now has four goals in the two games since getting new linemates.

When asked how it felt getting the hat trick, Rantanen said. “They’re always nice.”

He’s done this before, alas.

Rantanen’s first goal, a wicked, filthy snipe from the right circle, broke a scoreless tie at 11:23 of the second period. After Ian Cole blasted a slapper past MacKenzie Blackwood to make it 2-0 after two periods, Rantanen received a pass from Cale Makar, after breaking into the Devils’ zone deep, and put an easy one-timer home for a 3-0 edge.

The Devils tried to make it interesting at the end, but Rantanen doused any comeback hopes of the Devils with the empty-netter. It was not a selfish goal by No. 96, either. He kept looking around for someone to pass the puck to with the net empty. But as the Devils descended upon him, he thought the best course of action was to just put the thing in the net and get things over with.

“We played a full 60 minutes,” said Rantanen, when asked to account for the victory. “We played the same way all the way through, I think. It was a good team win.”

Rantanen had been in a bit of a slump prior to the game against St. Louis, with a goal and two assists in his previous six games. His talent is such that he can pile up a bunch of points in a hurry, however. The Devils found that out the hard way in this thing.

TAKEAWAYS, NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

• Valeri Nichushkin was a late scratch because of illness. He was replaced in the lineup by Vladislav Kamenev, who skated at left wing on a fourth line with Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Tyson Jost.
• Avs will take Sunday off.
• Avs were fortunate not to have had a 5-on-3 against them close to the midway mark of the third period, when they were up 3-1 and already killing a Ryan Graves penalty. Matt Calvert could have been called for tripping, but refs let it go.
• You don’t hear a lot anymore about the Avs missing out/screwing up on Will Butcher. The former Avs draftee, who signed as a free agent with the Devils out of DU instead, is a combined minus-28 since last season and has seen his offensive production fall off since a pretty good rookie year. Hey, nothing against Butcher, but the overreaction by some Avs pundits at the time, at his “getting away”, was overblown.
• The kind of penalty Jost took – interference in the defensive zone while the Avs had just cleared out the puck, with 7:23 left – won’t do him any favors regarding more ice time with coach Bednar.
• The Avs had a goal disallowed in the first period, when Joonas Donskoi raised his stick too high to bat one in.
• The Devils challenged Bellemare’s late goal that made it 4-1, but the war room in Toronto ruled that goalie MacKenzie Blackwood and Calvert had incidental contact, and Blackwood was out of the crease, behind the net. Wayne Simmonds was so irate about it that he was tossed from the game on a misconduct.
• Here’s what Calvert had to say about it: “I was really surprised they called it a goal on the ice.” But not for the reasons why you’d expect. Calvert thought the Devils would get the hometown call. “Normally, the ref doesn’t make the right call (on those) on the ice, and he did. It’s pretty impressive, in real time.” Calvert said, “I was out of the way. He tripped me.”
• Nathan MacKinnon quietly had two assists, bringing his season total now to 64, just one point behind Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl for the league lead. MacKinnon took a pretty big hit early in the game, and he was mad about it. He laid at least three big hits on Devils players, that I counted, after that.
• Sam Girard had two more assists. He’s got six points in the last two games.
• Ian Cole now has 20 points on the season. He doesn’t get enough credit for the offense he can bring.