Avs built to withstand losing Rantanen long-term to injury
Oct 23, 2019, 8:00 AM | Updated: 8:10 am
Monday night, the Colorado Avalanche suffered its first loss in regulation, dropping a game on the road to the St. Louis Blues to become the last team in the NHL to put a tick in the loss column
However, the biggest loss for the Avs on Monday may be star forward Mikko Rantanen, who suffered a lower-body injury in period two and did not return.
The 22-year-old all-star was able to hobble off the ice under his own power, but upon further review, the injury looked rather gruesome and could land Rantanen on the sidelines for a while.
The team should provide an update on Rantanen’s status on Wednesday.
Undoubtedly, Rantanen had been earning every bit of his six-year, $55 million extension through the first nine games of the season, sharing the team lead in points (12) and goals (5) with line-mate Nathan MacKinnon.
Losing the star forward for an extended period of time would be quite the damper on an exciting start to the Avs 2019-’20 campaign. But, it shouldn’t be as if the sky is falling.
After Monday’s loss to the Blues, captain Gabe Landeskog put it like this to the Denver Post:
“For us, with or without Mikko, there’s still plenty good enough hockey team in here to win a hockey game. So, we’re not going to make it about Mikko, or one guy (making up) the team. We’ve lost guys in the past and found ways to win hockey games.”
Despite significant contributions from the MacKinnon-Landeskog-Rantanen line (13 goals and 31 points), the depth behind the trio has really sparked the Avalanche to its hot star through its first nine games.
Newcomers Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Joonas Donskoi, Andre Burakovsky and Nazem Kadri have contributed significantly early on in their Avs tenures. Burakovsky trails only MacKinnon and Rantanen in points, tied with rookie defenseman Cale Makar (8) while all four have two or more goals on the young season.
Colorado has gotten contributions from guys down the roster as well, like defensemen Ian Cole and Ryan Graves, who run first and second on the team in terms of plus-minus (10 and 6, respectively).
Tyson Jost has four goals and five points from the third-line center spot. Jost and line-mates Colin Wilson and J.T. Compher rank third in the NHL in terms of forward lines, per DailyFaceoff.com.
So, while losing Rantanen long-term — or even short-term — is far from ideal, the Avalanche have the depth firepower to weather the oncoming storm.
