Nathan MacKinnon wristed home an equalizer goal in the third period, pumped his fist toward the crowd, and scores of hats immediately rained down on the ice.
Less than minute of ice time later, MacKinnon assisted Rantanen on a tipped-in power play goal that came as a result of Ottawa’s delay-of-game penalty for losing an offsides challenge on MacKinnon’s hat trick tally.
That completed Colorado’s comeback in a thrilling 6-4 win over Ottawa on Thursday at Ball Arena. It came on a night when the Avs netted four power-play goals and MacKinnon scored his 300th lamp-lighter, in addition to extending his career-high points streak to 17 games (tied for the longest streak in the NHL this season) while finishing with a Colorado-record four goals.
“He’s playing out of his mind right now,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said.
At the end of the madness, it was clear the Avs heard Devon Toews’ criticism loud and clear on MacKinnon’s historic night. The forward was ho-hum about his performance after putting on his Superman cape and lifting Colorado, which had lost seven of its last 11 games coming in, to a much-needed victory.
“I thought I’ve had better games, but I got some goals tonight that just went in,” MacKinnon said. “Hit one in off the shin pad, one on an empty netter. Sometimes it feels really easy, sometimes it feels hard. Tonight was easy. … (The 300 goal milestone) is not really (special). Slow start to my career, so I should’ve hit it a while ago.”
Colorado played far from perfectly but found its mojo when it needed to the most, two days after stumbling in a loss to last-place Chicago that prompted a frustrated Toews to call out his teammates for a lack of “self-awareness” and overall inconsistent play.
The Senators, sitting in the cellar in the Eastern Conference, saw their two-goal lead in the second period dissipate as they failed to contain Colorado’s top line. MacKinnon was in his own stratosphere while Colorado’s penalty-kill came up clutch at the end to preserve the victory.
“We’re asking that top line to do a lot right now,” Bednar said. “Val (Nichushkin) had 29 minutes and change of ice time as a forward tonight. He did it all — power play, penalty kill.
“Mac gets four goals, Mikko gets two. They’re probably a little frustrated with the way we played in the second as well, but yet, tonight, they responded, kept working and doing whatever they could do to drag us out of the mud. And they did.”
With consistent pressure in Ottawa’s defensive zone, Colorado came out with its foot on the gas to draw a penalty and score less than three minutes into the game.
MacKinnon’s slap shot found the left side of the net off assists from Cale Makar (who missed the last three games with a lower-body injury) and Jonathan Drouin. The perfectly executed triangle of passes gave MacKinnon a clean look at the net for his 15th goal of the year.
But then the Senators briefly grabbed ahold of the game with two goals in the span of 15 seconds.
Ottawa evened the game on a power play with 4:47 left in the first period, when Drake Batherson’s backhanded pass to Josh Norris in front of the net easily beat Alexandar Georgiev on the bottom right shelf. Shortly after, the Senators scored again off a loose rebound when Ridly Greig put home the puck in the bottom left shelf, quieting the arena.
Putting the Avs on his shoulders, MacKinnon stole the momentum back in the last 90 seconds of the period. He sent his shot through the five-hole of Joonas Korpisalo off a perfectly centered pass from Nichushkin for his 300th goal.
The Senators struck right back to open the second period, when Jacob Bernard-Docker’s wrist shot from the blue line snuck through traffic and into the net to make it 3-2 visitors.
“I couldn’t see the puck at all on that one,” Georgiev said.
With 5:13 left in the period, Ottawa came off a penalty kill and raced down the ice for a goal when Batherson put home a wrister that bounced off Georgiev’s shoulder and into the net. That put the Senators in command, 4-2. It looked like Colorado was on its way to a second straight ugly defeat.
“The second (period) was terrible,” Bednar said. “Odd-man rush after odd-man rush coming the other way. There was obviously a lack of detail in that period. … Look at the scoring chances we gave up in the second period. It was ridiculous, really. I think there’s probably at least one in there that (Georgiev) would like to have back, but then he makes a bunch of big saves and holds us in when we get into penalty trouble at the end.”
The Avs responded with Rantanen’s unassisted power-play goal with 16.2 seconds left in the second, a wrister that beat Korpisalo on the bottom right shelf and left the goalie slamming his blocker and glove on his leg pads in anger.
That goal proved pivotal and set up MacKinnon’s heroics in the third. It took the Avs ice crew several minutes to clean up the barrage of hats after No. 29’s third goal, and several more minutes for the referees to review the play.
After Rantanen’s go-ahead tip-in, the Avs defense held, killing three power plays while Georgiev made up for the earlier soft goal with a handful of clutch saves. MacKinnon then added a fourth goal for good measure in the waning seconds of the game on an empty net.
“First in Avs history (with four goals), so that’s pretty remarkable, with all the players that have been here,” Rantanen said. “Happy for him.”
Thursday marked MacKinnon’s seventh career hat trick (including the playoffs) as he became the fifth player in Avs/Nordiques history to reach the 300 goal mark (Joe Sakic 625, Michel Goulet 456, Peter Stastny 380, Milan Hejduk 375, MacKinnon 302).
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