In Raleigh Friday night, Mikko Rantanen helped the Colorado Avalanche end their most recent skid with a goal late in extra time to give the Avs a 2-1 win over the Hurricanes.
Matt Duchene got the primary assist on the one timer.
“With a lefty, it’s a one-timer,” Duchene said. “You’ve got to know who you’re with. I know he likes to one-time pucks from the top of the circle on opportunities like that, and I was just able to get the d-man to flip his stick a little bit and freeze the goalie with a fake and then slide it over.”
The win snapped a five-game skid the Avs had been riding.
Calvin Pickard made 28 saves to get the win.
“It’s funny, sometimes you could be playing your first game of the week and feel like you have no legs at all, and then you play a little bit more and you think you should be tired, but you’re not,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “I think that was the case for us tonight.”
The mandatory five-day rest break in the NHL may get people healthy and rested but the return for many clubs is dreadful; the Canes were coming off their break and lost their third straight.
Cam Ward stopped 35 shots in the loss.
Tyson Barrie scored in regulation for Colorado.
“He (Jarome Iginla) made a good little backhand to me and we had them 3-on-2,” Barrie said. “I went to shoot it and I didn’t see anything, so I thought I would throw a fake in there and try to get him to bite. Fortunately I had a lot of net.”
WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Hurricanes highlights
Jeff Skinner was the lone goal scorer for the Canes.
“Coming out of four days off this is what it looks like. This isn’t a surprise to anybody. We didn’t skate, we didn’t move the puck, we didn’t execute. Everything was in the feet. There’s no timing. That’s what it looked like to me as a coach. It goes away before four days,” Carolina head coach Bill Peters said.
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