Rantanen Scores A Pair As Avalanche Fall To Panthers

A struggling Avalanche squad came into last night having only won one of their last six games. The Florida Panthers had won two of their last five games. Both teams were in a slump and needed to get a win, but the Avalanche more so to get back in the playoff picture. Injuries have been the backstory to the Avalanche all season, but the team has barely held on to its position in the standings with the players that they have. Mikko Rantanen has been taking on the weight of the world with the team. He has scored the majority of the team’s even-strength goals for the year. I look at a key turning point in every period last night and what helped the Panthers win this game. 

First Period 

Artturi Lehkonen went into the corner to chase Aaron Ekblad and apply some forechecking pressure. Lehkonen tried to hit Ekblad with his stick to throw him off a bit and the officials called it a hooking infraction. This penalty directly led to a power play opportunity for the Florida Panthers. They were about halfway through the power play and carrying the puck back into the zone on the near side. Sam Reinhart picked the puck up at the goal line right as Sam Bennett sped down the slot. Reinhart spun and snapped a pass right onto Bennett’s tape for the tap-in to make it 3-0.

Second Period

The turning point in the second period was not much of a play itself but more so what happened after the fact.

As the Panthers rushed into the offensive zone with about 9:15 left in the period, a shot was taken on net by the Panthers. Kurtis MacDermid started to grab Givani Smith and the two exchanged some words. In the meantime, Logan O’Connor and Anton Lundell started to scuffle as well. There were not many fists thrown between the two fights, but the momentum shift was apparent. As the penalties offset and the game was five on five, the Avalanche were completely dominated for the rest of the period offensively. Colorado managed just one shot in the next four minutes. The period ended 4-1 after Matthew Tkachuk scored his 21st late in the period. 

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Third Period

The Avalanche started the period as a force to be reckoned with. They were able to control the game offensively and start to dominate the Panthers in their own zone. After the two goals by Mikko Rantanen and then 20 seconds later, Nathan MacKinnon there was one play that made a huge difference in the period (if not the game). Evan Rodrigues stole the puck in the Avalanche zone and began racing through the neutral zone joined by Lehkonen and Devon Toews. Rodrigues would snap a shot on goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and Lehkonen was right there for an easy open net goal. Or so they thought. Toews was a couple of inches offside on the rush. The Avalanche were able to score another goal after this but ultimately fell short 5-4 in the end. 

Conclusion

A costly first period is what ended up being the death note for the Avalanche last night. Defensive mistakes in the period ultimately cost them the game and they had to play catch-up the entire game. Toews’ offside call snowballed into a situation that the Avalanche would not be able to get back from. 

Quotes

Cale Makar on playing from behind: “You don’t want to play from behind every single game. It’s a good learning curve now for us I guess, but we have to learn to get off to better starts and hold leads.”

Makar on the third period: “We were just attacking. We had that attack mentality. We weren’t on our heels, especially even myself on the backend. I felt like we were breaking pucks out, working harder in the corners and getting pucks up to our forwards giving them opportunities to get into the O-zone. I feel like we had some good forecheck chances in the first two periods, but guys were always changing in and out, so it was tough to get anything going. In the third, I felt like we had some stuff going.”

Andrew Cogliano on tonight’s game: “At this point, can’t be taking many moral victories. Obviously, good job coming back but not good enough. We just didn’t execute the game plan that well tonight. We turned over a lot of pucks. Getting down 4-1 is tough. At the end, we got to get a kill to get us at least a point in overtime.”

All quotes provided by Avalanche PR