This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mikko Rantanen
Colorado Avalanche Right Wing
Fifty-five goals, third in the league, and the best long-range conversion rate of any forward on this roster.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | COL | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0 | 8:57 |
| 2016-17 | COL | 75 | 20 | 18 | 38 | -25 | 22 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 133 | 15.0 | 18:03 |
| 2017-18 | COL | 81 | 29 | 55 | 84 | 0 | 34 | 12 | 0 | 3 | 178 | 16.3 | 18:58 |
| 2018-19 | COL | 74 | 31 | 56 | 87 | +13 | 54 | 16 | 0 | 4 | 193 | 16.1 | 20:51 |
| 2019-20 | COL | 42 | 19 | 22 | 41 | -2 | 14 | 8 | 0 | 5 | 107 | 17.8 | 18:57 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 52 | 30 | 36 | 66 | +30 | 34 | 9 | 0 | 7 | 177 | 17.0 | 19:55 |
| 2021-22 | COL | 75 | 36 | 56 | 92 | +35 | 56 | 16 | 0 | 2 | 254 | 14.2 | 20:59 |
| 2022-23 | COL | 82 | 55 | 50 | 105 | +15 | 82 | 13 | 0 | 9 | 306 | 18.0 | 22:13 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 490 | 220 | 293 | 513 | +59 | 298 | 78 | 0 | 32 | 1357 | 16.2 | 19:53 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
55 goals — third in the National Hockey League — and 50 assists in all 82 games, plus-15, 22:13 a night, 306 shots at 17.97 per cent.
That is a career high by nineteen goals and it arrived in the season Makar missed 22 games and MacKinnon missed eleven. He was the constant.
53.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 75th percentile, with his ice at 75-61 against an expectation of 66.76-58.88. Eight goals better than the chances at the offensive end — good, and a long way short of what MacKinnon’s line produced.
The Finesse Game
306 shots at a median of 25 feet, 37 per cent from inside twenty, 22 per cent from beyond forty — a scorer’s distribution, weighted where scorers live.
Inside forty feet he took 230 shots and scored 48, at 20.87 per cent. That is the season: the volume is at the net and the conversion at the net is elite.
Beyond forty he took 67 and scored seven — 10.45 per cent, two and a half times the league rate for a forward. On that volume it is not a stable number and should not be read as a skill, but it is the largest single reason the goal total jumped.
27 tip-ins and eleven deflections in the shot-type record. He is 6-4 and he uses it in front, which is the half of his game the point totals never show.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 228, one of the largest forwards in the league who is also a first-line scorer.
3.19 miles a game at the 90th percentile on a 22.9 mph top speed at the 83rd. He is not slow and he is not fast; he is heavy and hard to separate from the puck along the wall, which is a different asset and the one Colorado has built two lines around.
82 penalty minutes is the highest figure of his career and reads as a man being asked to play harder minutes rather than one losing his temper.
The Intangibles
Tenth overall in 2015, and eight seasons in, 220 goals and 513 points in 490 games.
He played every game of a season in which the two men above him on the depth chart did not, scored 55, and was the third-best player on his own team by most accounts. That is either a compliment to Colorado or an underrating of him, and the honest answer is that this book cannot separate the two.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
7 of 96 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 7.3%, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:45 a game at five-on-five, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
64% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 95th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He is 6-4 and he uses it in front, which is the half of his game the point totals never show.”
“he is heavy and hard to separate from the puck along the wall, which is a different asset and the one Colorado has built two lines around”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,373 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.1%
- 76th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.7%
- 84th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 75 for, 61 against. Expected: 66.8 and 58.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 79 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.9 mph
- 86th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.05 a game
- Distance
- 3.19 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.2 mph
- 67th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1373 minutes at five-on-five
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- COL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.1% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,373 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nathan MacKinnon | 54.4% | 51.1% | 56.1% |
| Devon Toews | 56.4% | 49.1% | 57.1% |
| Cale Makar | 56.4% | 50.6% | 59.0% |
54.4% together, 51.1% for him apart and 56.1% for MacKinnon apart. He was worse away from MacKinnon, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than MacKinnon did.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
424 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 57 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.