All of a sudden, “Break up the Avalanche!” doesn’t necessarily mean trade any or all of ’em.
It can be tongue-in-cheek recognition that Colorado is riding only its third two-game winning streak of the season after of a 4-0 rout of the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday at the Pepsi Center. Mikko Rantanen‘s first career hat trick was the highlight and Calvin Pickard had 27 saves for his second shutout of the season as the Avalanche (15-33-2) gained a bit of redemption for a 10-1 loss in Montreal on Dec. 10.
“When you’re younger, you watch guys score hat tricks and the crowd is going wild,” said Rantanen, the 20-year-old Finnish winger. “So it’s a dream come true. But the most important thing still was the two points.”
What’s gotten into this team in the last two games?
“I don’t know,” said Rantanen. “I know we’re playing the way we should have been playing the last 30 games. I think we have been working hard, but now the puck is coming to us, too. We scored five goals the last game (in a 5-2 win over Winnipeg) and now we got four, so we just have to keep going like this to the end of the season.”
Against the Canadiens, Rantanen beat Canadiens goalie Carey Price only 30 seconds into the game with a less-than-howitzer shot near the right-wing boards. “I was surprised, yeah, but it was a great job by (Gabe Landeskog) and (Nathan MacKinnon) to go to the net,” Rantanen said. “It’s hard to score on Price that far if there’s nobody going to the net.”
Fourth-line winger Andreas Martinsen made it 2-0 with his third goal of the season at 2:25.
Rantanen’s second goal was on a deflection of former Canadiens defenseman Mark Barberio’s shot at 13:10 of the second period, and the third for Rantanen came on a one-timer from the lower edge of the right circle on a 5-on-3 at 6:01 of the third.
“We’ve seen so many games where we haven’t put everything together,” said Avalanche coach Jared Bednar. “Power play’s good, penalty kill’s bad. Two lines are good, two lines are bad. And I just think these last couple of games, we’ve been a four line team, we’ve gotten contributions from the other lines on offensive plays, scoring chances and goals. The power play scored again tonight on two chances, and the PK was really good again and Pick was good in goal again.
“Even early in the year, when we played really well, we wouldn’t get goaltending. We played poorly, we got the goaltending. We just couldn’t put it all together and we’ve been able to do that for the last two nights.”
Pickard had five of his saves as the Canadiens went 0-5 on the power play.
“We played great defense,” he said. “If we play like that, there’s going to be a lot more low-scoring games. . . They’re a good team. It’s nice to get a shutout against a good team and we definitely want to build off that. As a group, we know we can replicate that every night and play like that, and that’s what we have to do.”
The Avalanche’s other two-game streaks came in the first two games of the season against Dallas and at Pittsburgh, and then on Nov. 19 and 21 at Minnesota and Columbus. Colorado has yet to win three straight, and the next chance is Thursday at home against the Penguins.
“At some point, you have to hit the bottom,” Martinsen said. “I guess we hit the bottom, so now we have to start building our way up. The guys are starting to get confidence and playing looser and not thinking too much. What’s happened has happened and now all of us can try to have a good finish to the season. When you win, it’s more fun and the mood’s better when you come to the rink.”
Footnotes. Joe Nieuwendyk, the former general manager of the Dallas Stars who now is a pro scout and advisor for the Carolina Hurricanes, was among the scouts representing six teams at the game. The Hurricanes have the sort of young defensemen, either already in the NHL or as prospects, the Avalanche is interested in for its potential short- and long-term retooling on the blue line. D-men on the Hurricanes roster now include Justin Faulk, 24; Jaccob Slavin, 22; Brett Pesce, 22; Ryan Murphy, 23; and Noah Hanifin, 20. The prospects are Jake Bean, the No. 1 draft choice in 2016 now in major junior with Calgary of the Western Hockey League; and Haydn Fleury and Roland McKeown, with Charlotte of the AHL. . . Avalanche winger Matt Nieto was struck in the leg by a Shea Weber shot in the third period, stayed down, and needed help off the ice. He was getting X rays after the game and Bednar said he didn’t yet have word of the results.
BOXSCORE: Avalanche 4, Canadiens 0
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
