Still wearing a no-contact orange jersey, winger Mikko Rantanen went through a full practice with the Avalanche on Saturday morning for the first time since suffering an ankle injury in a rookie showcase game against San Jose on Sept. 17.

After the practice, the Avalanche headed to the airport for the trip to Las Vegas and the final game of the exhibition season, against Los Angeles on Saturday night. The Avalanche finished 6-0 in the preseason, tying the Kings 1-1 on Mikhail Grigorenko’s goal with 1:14 remaining and then claiming the 2-1 win on Gabe Landeskog’s score only 37 seconds into overtime at the T-Mobile Arena.

Rantanen, shooting for a possible return to the lineup by the opener next Saturday against Dallas at the Pepsi Center, didn’t make the trip to Las Vegas.

“I’m getting better every day,” said Rantanen, 19, the Avalanche’s 2015 first-round draft choice. “The rehab had gone pretty well and it’s starting to feel pretty good. I just have to keep it feeling good. That’s the goal.”

Rantanen has been skating for a week, but Saturday was the first time he had practiced.

“I could go every drill,” he said. “I didn’t feel it. So it’s definitely pretty good now.”

Will he be ready to play in the regular-season opener?

“We’ll see,” he said. “We just want to go day to day now. It’s still one week ’til the opening night … We have to be smart with it.”

Rantanen hasn’t been available to the media since the injury, but that changed Saturday when he went through the full practice. He said of the injury in the rookie game: “I chipped it out and fell on the ankle a little bit. I twisted it there. Unlucky, but that’s how it is sometimes.”

With the Avs conscious of not burning a season on his NHL entry-level contract, Rantanen was with Colorado for nine games — the maximum before the contract kicked in — last season in two stints. The first six were at the start of the season, the other three late in the schedule. He didn’t have a point with Colorado, but was impressive at San Antonio, getting 24 goals and 36 assists in 52 games and winning the AHL’s rookie of the year honor, the Red Garrett Memorial Award.

“It was a good year,” he said. “Of course, it wasn’t very good for the (Rampage), but personally, I learned a lot,” he said. “It’s a tough game in the AHL, too, so I learned a lot about the (North) American style of play in a small rink. I like it more than a bigger one because there’s more things happening faster there. You get the scoring chances more because there’s not as much room. The goal is pretty close from the corners and in Europe, it’s pretty far away to wheel from the corner. So that’s good for me.”

If, as expected, Rantanen sticks with the Avalanche this season, he’ll make $894,166 in the first year of his three-year entry-level contract.

“I think I’m physically and mentally ready to play in the NHL,” he said. “I just want to first put my ankle at 100 percent and then show what I can do.”.

Of the 27 players remaining on the Colorado roster, Rantanen, Jarome Iginla (hip), John Mitchell (hip flexor) and Blake Comeau (groin) didn’t make the trip for the exhibition in the new Las Vegas arena, which will be the home of an NHL expansion franchise next season. The Dallas Stars beat the Kings 6-3 Friday night in the first hockey game in the building.

Then on Saturday night, Jeff Carter’s goal at 18:01 of the first period gave Los Angeles a 1-0 lead, and with the Kings’ Jonathan Quick and the Avalanche’s Semyon Varlamov playing well in the nets, that’s the way it stayed until the late stages of the third period.

First, with Varlamov off for a sixth attacker, Grigorenko tied it up with his fourth goal of the exhibition season with 1:14 remaining. Then Landeskog ended it with his early O.T. goal.

Footnote. The Avalanche will take Sunday off … Colorado coach Jared Bednar’s wife, Susan, and daughter, Savega, were scheduled to return to the family’s home in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday after earlier joining the evacuation as Hurricane Matthew approached the U.S. mainland. Susan and Savega waited out the storm at the home of friends in inland Columbia, the state capital. By the time Matthew reached Charleston, it had weakened to a Category 1 storm, but it nonetheless caused severe flooding in the city’s historic downtown.