Rantanen’s Playoffs Spoiler
After not seeing the Blackhawks in four months, the Colorado Avalanche played them three times in March. The second game came a little past the midway point, on March 20.
Going into the game, the Blackhawks were 30-34-9. As noted, this 5-1 game eliminated Chicago from playoff contention for the first time since 2001-08. (Ding-dong the witch is dead.)
Chicago knew they were staving off elimination. So the Blackhawks went on the board first on a goal by Brent Seabrook. The Avalanche answered early in the second with a goal from Alexander Kerfoot. The tally that proved to be the game-winner — and playoffs spoiler — came just under three minutes later.
Rantanen’s partner in crime is the same in this game as it was in the whole series — MacKinnon. He collects the puck from Tyson Barrie — who showcases some terrific moves to get the puck into the Hawks zone — near the playoff circle. He dishes the puck to Rantanen.
Mikko lifts the puck over Anton Forsberg’s glove hand and into the net:
Barrie collected a secondary assist on this power play. However, in addition to walking the puck into the zone, he also created a hullabaloo in front of Forsberg, which helped Rantanen. This was some good work by our T-Brat.
Colorado Avalanche players such as Alexander Kerfoot and Sven Andrighetto also had noteworthy goals against the Chicago Blackhawks. However, we’ll save those for their own posts.
For today, we’ll leave this as the Rants and Nate Dawg show.