Colorado pounds San Jose
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On Jan. 13, the last time the Avs played at home, they pummeled the St. Louis Blues by seven goals. On Tuesday, Colorado pounded the San Jose Sharks 7-3 — with all four lines contributing a goal.
The struggling second line got two from left winger Brandon Saad. Joonas Donskoi got one from the third line and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare from the fourth. Third-line winger Valeri Nichushkin
also scored on a short-handed breakaway, and Devon Toews represented the Avs defensemen in the scoring column.
The worldly top line featuring electrifying center Nathan MacKinnon and AllStar wingers Gabe Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen contributed a power-play goal from Rantanen. But the line otherwise gladly took a back seat for a team looking for depth scoring after a 3-3 start.
Colorado (4-3) overcame a 1-0 deficit by scoring three times within a span of 3:06 at the end of the first period and tacked on four second-period goals to take a commanding 7-2 lead into the second intermission.
Rantanen’s goal closed out a dominating last half of the first period, and it was historic. He extended his career-high goals streak to six games — the longest Avalanche goals streak since MacKinnon in 2018 and the longest active streak in the NHL. With a goal in Thursday’s rematch with the Sharks, Rantanen would tie Milan Hejduk and Joe Sakic for the club record. Sakic scored in seven
footnotes. MacKinnon’s first shot of the game tied Sakic for the most consecutive-shot games in club history. Both produced a shot in 227 straight games. Sakic did it from Nov. 17, 1995, to Jan. 12, 1999. MacKinnon’s streak started on Oct. 14, 2017, at Dallas. … Sam Girard played in his 227th consecutive regular-season game, passing Karlis Skrastins for the secondlongest ironman streak by an Avalanche defenseman. Martin Skoula holds the record by playing in 285 consecutive games. …
Johnson and Ryan Graves returned to the lineup as the third defensive pairing. Johnson has played in just one of six games after sitting out all of training camp because of COVID-19 protocol. Graves was a healthy scratch Sunday at Anaheim. … Recently acquired defenseman Greg Pateryn was placed on waivers Monday. He cleared Tuesday and will now be eligible to go back and forth from the taxi squad or minors as waiverexempt. He was placed on the taxi squad Tuesday afternoon. … Landeskog needs one goal to tie Peter Forsberg (202) for the third-most goals in club history.