Mikko Rantanen has reiterated for weeks that the individual achievements don’t matter to him. Not true, said Jared Bednar. The Avalanche coach noticed Rantanen has been “squeezing his stick a little tight” in recent games.
The chances kept piling up, but the results weren’t as frequent.
“You’re going to think about it It’s human nature,” Bednar said last Saturday after Rantanen scored his 49th goal. “You’re at 48. You’re not thinking about it when you’re maybe at 40, 39. … I don’t want him to have it in his head. But I think now he can taste it.”
The goal celebration Thursday night in San Jose looked like a player who was relieved to get it over with.
With a game-tying goal in the first period against the Sharks, Rantanen became the Avalanche’s first 50-goal scorer in a season since Milan Hejduk in 2002-03.
Hejduk scored his 50th and final goal of that season on April 6, 2003 — 20 years to the day before Rantanen matched him.
Rantanen is the fifth player in Avalanche/Nordiques franchise history to score 50 goals in a season, joining Michel Goulet, Joe Sakic, Jacques Richard and Hejduk. This is the ninth 50-goal season in franchise history and the fourth since the team moved to Denver in 1995. Sakic did it in 1995-96 and 2000-01.
Rantanen scored again early in the second period, giving him the NHL lead in even strength goals with 40 this season. His goals in San Jose also inched him closer to joining Nathan MacKinnon in the Avalanche’s 100-point club. Rantanen is up to 96 with five games and change remaining. MacKinnon reached the milestone for the first time in his career Tuesday night in San Jose, becoming the first Avs player with a 100-point season since Sakic in 2006-07.
Sakic owns the Avalanche’s single-season goals record with 54 in 2000-01. The franchise’s all-time leader is Goulet, who had seasons with 57, 56 and 55 goals in Quebec City.
“It’s just a number,” Rantanen told Altitude TV in an interview at first intermission.
