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 55.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,394 minutes, the 89th percentile, and his ice went 50-45 against an expectation of 65.45-53.39. 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.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,394 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.1%
- 89th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.2%
- 86th 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: 50 for, 45 against. Expected: 65.5 and 53.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 4 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 201 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.
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 55.1% — 2.8 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 | 57.2% | 42.3% | 58.0% |
| Devon Toews | 57.0% | 52.3% | 51.0% |
| Cale Makar | 56.7% | 52.6% | 49.6% |
57.2% together, 42.3% for him apart and 58.0% 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.