Morning skate notebook: Lineup changes and an admonition to Rantanen

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Checking in here from Rogers Arena, where the Avalanche bring their battered selves to face the Vancouver Canucks tonight (8 p.m.).

With Erik Johnson and Anton Lindholm now out for who knows how long, the defensive pairings will be thus:

Zadorov-Barrie

Nemeth-Girard

Warsofsky-Siemens

Obviously, this is a tough situation. The Avs are now missing three of what were among their top four D-men from about a month ago in Johnson, Lindholm and Mark Barberio. If the Avs are to have ANY hope of winning games from here on out, while they’re gone, they will need two things: 1. Great, awesome goaltending from Semyon Varlamov and 2. Lots and lots of goals from the top line.

About that second item: Mikko Rantanen has just one goal in the last 12 games, with the one goal coming in a blowout loss at Winnipeg. Suffice to say, he needs to get it going again, pronto.

I asked Jared Bednar just a few minutes ago what has been the issue with Rants’ drop in production of late, and this is what he said:

“He’s got to get to the front of the net,” Bednar told BSN Denver. “He’s got to get to the front of the net and he’s got to stick around the net. He went through stretches like that last year a little bit, where he was playing some good hockey but was not in the dirty areas, the scoring areas, enough. He (was) kind of fading out of those spots where the puck’s coming to the net. We’ve sat down, talked to him a little bit, shown him some stuff and hopefully he corrects that here tonight.”

OTHER NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

• Bednar said Jonathan Bernier (concussion) is “progressing.” But there’s still no firm timetable.
• Tyson Jost will center the fourth line tonight, with Nail Yakupov and Colin Wilson. Alexander Kerfoot will center a line with Gabriel Bourque and J.T. Compher.
• Dominic Toninato and Andrei Mironov will be healthy scratches.

I’ll be posting some audio and video soon from the skate. Thanks for the well wishes from being out the last few days with the death flu too.

Video: