This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mikko Rantanen
Colorado Avalanche Right Wing
Six foot four and 228 pounds with a career 16.09 per cent finishing rate across 1,628 shots — the heaviest forward on the roster and the best finisher on it.
| 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 | COL | 80 | 42 | 62 | 104 | +19 | 50 | 14 | 0 | 9 | 271 | 15.5 | 22:54 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 570 | 262 | 355 | 617 | +78 | 348 | 92 | 0 | 41 | 1628 | 16.1 | 20:18 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
Eighty games, 42 goals and 62 assists for 104 points, 14 on the power play, 22:54 a night and plus-19. He converted 15.50 per cent of 271 shots.
He took 55.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,394 minutes, the 90th percentile, and his ice went 87-65 against an expectation of 69.44-55.34. Fifteen goals of scoring missing at five-on-five, on a club that finished second in the league at finishing, and it happened to the two best forwards on it.
The Finesse Game
He shoots from a median of 25 feet with 38 per cent from inside 20 and only 14 per cent from beyond 40, which is a genuinely rare profile for a winger who takes 271 shots. He gets to the dangerous ice and shoots from there.
A career 16.09 per cent across 1,628 shots is an elite finishing rate sustained over nine seasons, and 262 goals in 570 games is what it produces. The one-timer from the left circle is the most dangerous single shot on the club and 92 career power-play goals are built on it.
Three hundred and fifty-five career assists. At 6-4 and 228 he protects the puck below the goal line and nobody takes it off him, which is where a great many of them come from.
The Physical Game
He is the heaviest forward on the roster by nineteen pounds and he uses it in the offensive zone rather than in his own. Fifty penalty minutes in 80 games is a moderate rate.
He wins the wall against defencemen and holds pucks for a full extra second while a play develops behind him. He is not a punishing forechecker and does not finish checks for their own sake.
The Intangibles
Tenth overall in 2015 out of Nousiainen, nine seasons in one organisation, 617 points in 570 games and a Stanley Cup. He has scored thirty or more in five of the last six seasons.
He is 28, on a club that also employs Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, and the arithmetic of keeping all three of them is the whole of the Colorado question. It does not have an obvious answer.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
17:26 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, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He wins the wall against defencemen and holds pucks for a full extra second while a play develops behind him.”
“He is not a punishing forechecker and does not finish checks for their own sake.”
“At 6-4 and 228 he protects the puck below the goal line and nobody takes it off him, which is where a great many of them come from.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,394 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.6%
- 90th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.5%
- 87th 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: 87 for, 65 against. Expected: 69.4 and 55.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 10 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 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, 2023-24 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.24 a game
- Distance
- 3.35 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.8 mph
- 94th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 1394 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, 2023-24
- The club
- COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.6% — 3.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First line, 1,394 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nathan MacKinnon | 58.2% | 41.3% | 57.2% |
| Devon Toews | 57.2% | 53.4% | 51.1% |
| Cale Makar | 56.7% | 54.2% | 50.0% |
58.2% together, 41.3% for him apart and 57.2% 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
389 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 43 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.