It wasn’t a handshake line at the end of this remarkable seven-game series for Mikko Rantanen. It was a hug line.

Rantanen won a Stanley Cup with the Avalanche. He grew up and matured into a superstar with the Avalanche. While he's officially in a new phase of his career, you'll forgive him for feeling a little bittersweet about burying guys he used to enter grueling hockey battles with all the time. You don't just forget those kinds of memories.

Rantanen is the first player in NHL history to score a hat trick in the third period of a Game 7, and the first to record multiple four-point periods in a single postseason after also achieving the feat with a goal and three assists in the second period of Game 6.