Cursed? Doomed? Lost season? These Avs? If that’s what it says in the script, then somebody in the production office forgot to send Mikko Rantanen a copy.
“We never put our heads down when we go down,” Rantanen said Sunday after slotting home the game-winner with 21.1 seconds left in overtime as the Avalanche rallied for a wild, woolly 6-5 overtime victory over Edmonton at Ball Arena.
“Even though (it happened) three times in the game … (we) just stick with it. So I think it’s a mental thing.”
The NHL regular season is hockey’s Daytona 500, where finishing in one piece is half the battle. The Avs — 6-2-2 over their last 10 tilts, winners of three straight, 31-19-5 overall — are creeping toward the cars at the front of the Western Conference again, despite running on about three good tires since last Columbus Day.
Rantanen, Nathan MacKinnon (one goal, two assists) haven’t quit on the race, or on one another. So why should GM Chris MacFarland?
“You know it’s coming, it’s coming soon,” Rantanen, who leads the squad in goals (36), said of the March 3 NHL trade deadline. “You know the deadline (is coming) obviously, but it’s not in our hands. Mostly our hands are (on) just how we build the game … it’s just how we build our game so we are (at the) top of our game when April comes.”
On legs dogged from having played roughly 24 hours earlier in St. Louis, the Avs came all the way back from down 3-0 and 5-3 against Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. I asked Rantanen Sunday: Is this the kind of win that sends a message to MacFarland and the front office?
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I think so.”
And how good would Anaheim’s Adam Henrique, who could slot right into that 2C spot vacated by Nazem Kadri, look in Burgundy and Blue? Solid on the faceoff, good on the power play — the Avs went 0-for-4 Sunday with the extra man, much to a sellout crowd’s dismay — and a fast, poised, cagey, two-way vet.
With Ryan O’Reilly in Toronto, Bo Horvat with the Islanders and Chicago’s Jonathan Toews reportedly off the trade table for health and logistical reasons, there’s been a run on viable centers lately, and we’ve still got 11 days until the trade window shuts.
If you’re MacFarand, why wait? Mojo is a fickle beast in pro hockey, and the Avs have finally grabbed a hold of its toe again.
Even the Gabe Landeskog news is hopeful. Sort of. The captain was spotted walking past the media throngs late Sunday afternoon in good spirits and a resplendent suit. No limping. No signs of pain. Landy even said “Hi” to us jackals in the press corps before heading on his merry way.
Word is he’ll skate Monday, although “skate” — like, well, anything coming from official channels on Cale Makar’s health — is premeditatively and intentionally vague.
“It’s a set of eyes, one of their peers, a guy that everyone respects, (who) will be watching the games and can share his thoughts,” coach Jared Bednar noted.
Where the Avs are sounding more definitive is with the status of defenseman Erik Johnson, as Bednar confirmed an ESPN report that the popular veteran has a broken ankle.
On one hand, it’s awful news for a classy franchise bedrock. On the other, it offers MacFarland and the Avs a loophole, perhaps a perfectly timed one at that, to do some shopping.
If Johnson remains on the LTIR (long-term injured reserve) list, Colorado can spend over the cap to the equivalent of Johnson’s salary slot ($6 million) on someone else. Suddenly, adding, say, Henrique to the mix, who reportedly commands $5.8 million in salary, not only looks reasonable, but downright plausible.
The Avs need depth scoring and more consistency on face-offs. Adding Henrique, in theory, would help on both fronts.
The regular season is about your top two lines. But the playoffs are about your third and fourth, about squeezing whatever you can out of almost every shift.
Once the Avs gave Bednar more tools to play with last winter, he built a Stanley Cup winner. When deep teams dance longer, it’s by design.
Said depth also helps you finish one marathon in order to start the next — a postseason run — with a head of steam.
The back-to-backs chucked at the defending champs already have been beyond dumb, and Sunday was the Avs’ second of three that landed between Feb. 13 and Feb. 25. Colorado gets five more from March 4 through the regular-season finale at Nashville on April 14.
After winning at St. Louis on Saturday and hopping on a plane home, is it any wonder the boys looked leggy and sloppy early against the Oilers, collateral damage from a compressed slate?
“Definitely not our best for a good portion of the game, but great job sticking with it and fighting all the way to the end,” forward J.T. Compher said. “We got rewarded for not giving up.”
Down bodies, down hope, the Avs keep swinging. If MacFarland won’t do the same, what kind of message does that send?
