This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Mikko Rantanen
Dallas Stars Right Wing
88 points across three clubs in one season, and the most expensive bet in hockey that the last two months meant nothing.
| 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 | COL/CAR/DAL | 82 | 32 | 56 | 88 | +13 | 60 | 11 | 0 | 6 | 212 | 15.1 | 21:15 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 652 | 294 | 411 | 705 | +91 | 408 | 103 | 0 | 47 | 1840 | 16.0 | 20:25 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
32 goals and 56 assists in 82 games for 88 points between Colorado, Carolina and Dallas, plus-13, on 21:15 a night and 212 shots.
54 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 86th percentile, and a median shot from 24 feet with 43 per cent of them inside 20 — the profile of a big winger who scores from where big wingers should. The 60 penalty minutes are the highest of his career and say something about how the season went.
The Finesse Game
6-4 and 228 with hands that belong on a much smaller man, which is the whole player. He holds the puck on the wall until a defenceman commits and then either walks out of the corner with it or finds the man arriving late, and there is no way to defend both.
The shot is heavy and quick and he takes it from inside the dots — 43 per cent of his attempts came from within 20 feet, which for a winger of this size is the difference between a scorer and a possession specialist. 56 assists says the playmaking is not a secondary skill; he has been a point-per-game man for six seasons and the assists have grown every year.
The Physical Game
As physically difficult a winger to play against as the league has. He wins pucks by simply not being moveable, protects them with his back to pressure for as long as he needs, and goes to the net front without being asked.
60 penalty minutes in a season spent being traded twice is the one worrying line. He is not a dirty player, and a man who takes 30 in a normal year taking 60 in this one is a man whose season got away from him.
The Intangibles
Traded in January by the only club he had known, traded again in March, and re-signed by the third for eight years. That is an unusual amount to have happened to a 28-year-old, and the hockey did not visibly suffer: 88 points is the second-best season of his career.
What Dallas has bought is the eight years, and the honest reservation is that the last two months of it were 20 games in a new system with a new centre. Nobody has yet seen him for a full season in this uniform, and the price assumes the Colorado version arrives.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,272 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54%
- 87th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.1%
- 88th 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: 44 for, 46 against. Expected: 60.5 and 51.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 86 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
2024-25 with COL · 829 minutes at five-on-five
- Ross Colton22%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.0% — 3.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,272 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nathan MacKinnon | 58.1% | 49.7% | 58.5% |
| Cale Makar | 59.0% | 50.7% | 55.4% |
| Devon Toews | 54.1% | 53.9% | 55.8% |
58.1% together, 49.7% for him apart and 58.5% 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
329 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 29 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.