10 Observations: Rantanen Feeds Kiviranta the Puck, the Media; Avalanche Win Over Seattle

The Avalanche are finally above .500 on home ice again. After defeating the Kraken 5-2 on Sunday, Colorado improved to 9-8-0 at Ball Arena. The record is still a shell of what it was a season ago but it’s a good start to what’s going to be a long stretch of games where a majority will be played in Denver.

Cale Makar and Valeri Nichushkin scored for the Avs. And Joel Kiviranta scored his first career (regular season) hat trick as the team improved to 21-15-0 entering the holiday break while riding a three-game winning streak.

We’ll all just pretend that playoff one wasn’t a thing.

My Observations from Sunday’s big win

Publisher Note: These 10 Observations pieces are usually behind the paywall but I’m keeping this one free since it’s the last game before the holidays. Figured I’d feed off the positive vibes in the Avs’ room and the joyous holiday week ahead. Enjoy!

1. Speaking of the home and road split, the Avalanche need to go 22-1-1 at home the rest of the way to match their crazy 31 wins from a season ago. Granted, they only ended up winning 19 on the road last season and this year they’re already sitting at 12 wins not even halfway through their road schedule.

2. Total dominance against Seattle. The teams have already completed their three-game season series and Colorado easily won all three. It didn’t matter what part of the season it was or who was in goal, either. Justus Annunen handled the first two meetings before Mackenzie Blackwood got the start on Sunday.

3. Big goal for Kiviranta in the second period. The eventual game-winning goal must’ve caught Joey Daccord by surprise given the fact that one of the NHL’s elite scorers, Mikko Rantanen, looked off the shot to feed it to a bottom-six forward instead. Kiviranta has been excellent this season and plays his role well. His 10 goals are already a career-high and we’re not even halfway through the season.

4. Speaking of which, five of those 10 Kiviranta goals have come against the Seattle Kraken. Kryptonite.

5. Don’t look now, but the Avalanche are inching closer to the Minnesota Wild for second place in the division — albeit fourth place Dallas has games in hand on the Avs. But that’s what happens when you win three straight and watch the team ahead of you in the standings lose four straight in regulation. More notably, the Avs have 21 wins. Only five teams have more entering Monday’s games.

6. Nichushkin is back. Well, he’s been back, but it took him a few games to get his feet under him. Nichushkin didn’t register a point in his first three games but has since scored 11 goals and added 5 assists for 16 points in as many games. He’s starting to look like the beast he was last season. Great news for the Avs.

7. The crowd loved that breakaway save Blackwood made five minutes into the third period. But what’s the deal with the jumbotron not yet being set up with a chant for him? The Geor-gie chants happened all the time, often led by whoever controlled the jumbotron. Let’s get these new goalie chants going. They deserve it.

8. When we got into the locker room postgame, Rantanen was walking out and pointed at Kiviranta, instructing him to stay. And then he waved at the media and told us to go talk to Kivi, adding in something along the lines of “he likes speaking English to all of you.” Rantanen basically fed the media to Kiviranta a couple of hours after feeding him the puck on that two-on-one play. Funny moment. Feels like guys are having some fun again.

9. When asked about the Parker Kelly, Logan O’Connor, and Kiviranta line, Jared Bednar said it’s a great fourth line and one that reminds him of the fourth line he won the Stanley Cup with. Which is true. I think this line is promising and can perform in the playoffs. Only one problem: This is currently the team’s third line. If Bednar actually wants that to be the fourth line, then who plays on line 3?

10. This was the first time all season that Ball Arena felt like it was ramping up toward a playoff atmosphere. Kudos to the fans who were there. We’ve got a lot of home games coming up and I’m excited to see things get riled up.