In 2023, star right winger Mikko Rantanen was central to the competitive blueprint for the Colorado Avalanche. And although Rantanen was dealt to Carolina this season in one of the bigger trades in recent NHL history, he spoke to THN's Ken Campbell in a feature story for the magazine's Dec. 1, 2023 edition:

RANTANEN AND RAVING

By Ken Campbell

"Hi, it's Mikko. Sorry for calling you on Thanksgiving. I know I was supposed to call you a couple of times. Sorry about that…” He apparently isn’t aware that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in the middle of October and not late November, but that’s cool. And understandable. What sticks with you is how there are absolutely no airs, no sense that the receiver of the call should be honored that an NHL (super?) star would even consider ringing him back.

Yeah, Mikko Rantanen is like that. Even for a country that produces some of the most down-to-earth people in the world, Rantanen stands out. He’s definitely not quiet and reserved, and he speaks easily, though not quite on a Teemu Selanne/Patrik Laine level. But there is a refreshing lack of self-importance surrounding the player they call ‘The Moose’ in Colorado, the one who has no problem occupying the backseat while Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar ride shotgun up front. “He walks down the street at home, and everybody knows who he is,” said Rantanen’s agent Robert Hooper. “But he’s almost oblivious to it. He just doesn’t carry himself in that way.”

And even as Rantanen develops in his late 20s into one of the NHL’s premier and underappreciated offensive producers, the son of a carpenter and a nurse from the tiny town of Nousiainen, 12 miles from Turku in southwest Finland, refuses to allow himself to get all uppity. Even if he is the only Notable Person™ from Nousiainen, according to the town’s Wikipedia page.

“I came from a town of 5,000 people, where we didn’t have much, and my parents worked their asses off to give me and my sisters chances to do what we wanted,” Rantanen said. “I don’t read a lot of things, and I have no idea what people are saying about me.”

That’s kind of a Finnish thing, too, like how you’re always supposed to shake hands with the wife first when meeting a married couple, or how you’re discouraged from slapping people on the back because it’s viewed as condescending. “Finnish people,” Rantanen said, “we’re a little more shy, and there’s no fluff, you know? We don’t really think about the extra stuff. We just try to move forward.”

If Rantanen did read the press clippings, he would have seen last season when Avalanche coach Jared Bednar, amid a spate of injuries, said of Rantanen: “He can play with guys on his back.” Bednar did not specify at the time whether he meant Rantanen was carrying his teammates on his back or dragging opponents. Rantanen would also read that people are finally beginning to view him as an elite offensive producer.

And by elite, we mean really elite.  After going through much of his career as more of a set-up guy, Rantanen exploded for 55 goals last season, third in the league behind only Connor McDavid – who won the Rocket Richard Trophy – and David Pastrnak. That total was the fourth-highest ever recorded by a Finnish-born player. In fact, from the start of 2021-22 to a quarter of the way through 2023-24, only four players (Leon Draisaitl, McDavid, Auston Matthews and Pastrnak) had scored more goals than Rantanen. And only four (McDavid, Draisaitl, Matthew Tkachuk and linemate Nathan MacKinnon) had more points. And to this point in Rantanen’s career, only Jari Kurri has produced at a higher point-per-game rate than Rantanen among Finnish-born players. That’s some heady company.

“I try to be with those guys,” Rantanen said. “They’re all incredible hockey players overall and really good goal-scorers, so those are the guys I try to learn a bit from. I don’t watch a lot of hockey, but I like to watch highlights and see what the best players do and how they score the goals. I try to learn from other guys. You see those highlights so easily these days. I’m trying to be up there with them. I don’t think about it as much as media and the fans do, but I try to perform the best I can to be up there with those guys.”

In fact, it’s not outrageous to suggest that Rantanen might just be the best player among the greatest cohort of Finnish stars the game has ever seen. The Little Country That Could is undoubtedly on some kind of hockey high in recent years and is not the least bit intimidated by the prospect of playing with the world’s hockey superpowers. In 2016, the hockey world was entranced by the Finnish junior team’s top line of Sebastian Aho between Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi.

And with good reason. The three of them were spectacular in the tournament, finishing 1-2-3 in scoring. What people might not remember as much was the second line, which featured Roope Hintz between Kasperi Kapanen and Rantanen, or that Rantanen was the captain of that team, or that Rantanen was the one who scored late in the gold-medal game to put Finland ahead 3-2 before Russia tied it with six seconds left, which led to Kapanen’s heroics in overtime. Seven years later, Puljujarvi can’t find work in the NHL and Laine has been a healthy scratch, while Hintz is a beast in Dallas and Rantanen will challenge for his second straight 50-goal season.

So how did this happen? Rantanen had always been a really good and consistent goal-scorer, only having failed to reach the 20-goal mark once in his NHL career, when he was limited to just 42 games during the truncated 2019-20 season. He took a significant jump when he scored 36 two seasons ago, but few people were anticipating the explosion that transpired last year. With linemates Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog missing time early – and in the case of Landeskog, missing the entire season – it almost seemed as though Rantanen realized his team needed more from him in terms of scoring, and he delivered. “I’m pretty sure he scored every single one of our goals in December (of 2022),” said Makar last season.

Not exactly. The Avs had 36 goals, of which Rantanen had 11, so just over 30 percent. Last season, Rantanen had 306 shots on goal and 559 shot attempts, blowing by his career highs by miles.

For Rantanen, it’s about feeling more comfortable with his game. That has allowed him to change his mindset when it comes to shooting the puck. “When I was growing up, I was definitely more of a pass-first guy,” Rantanen said. “Now, it’s mostly the mentality and coming to my prime now. This is my eighth (full) year, and I’ve been more comfortable every year being a leader on the team, and I feel like I’m a better overall player on the mentality side. I feel like the way I think the game, I have more patience, and I try to think a little more. That comes with experience.”

Ismo Lehkonen has some very strong thoughts on Rantanen, who just happens to play on the same team as Lehkonen’s son, Artturi. The elder Lehkonen is a highly respected skills coach in Finland and does everything from analytics to broadcasting with the Liiga. He also runs pro skates in the summer that include his son and Rantanen, and just about every other Finnish guy who plays in the NHL.

Lehkonen has come to the conclusion that Rantanen can create offense at an elite level because he has a mind and level of skill for the game that probably fly under the radar because of his size. A few years back, Landeskog said in a post-game interview that Rantanen “plays like a big moose out there,” and the local television rightsholder ran with it and gave him ‘The Moose’ moniker. And it stuck. Rantanen checks in at 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, so he has a lot of power in his game (duh). But there’s just as much talent as there is raw physicality behind that strength.

“He’s the only guy I know that, when we’re battling, forechecking hard, he’s like a beast,” Lehkonen said. “Then he steals the puck and starts running the offense. He can push the puck and start a play like a basketball player. He’s one of the only players I’ve seen that can switch the button. That’s the hardest thing, to stop those players.”

But there’s another thing, according to Lehkonen. And it has to do with floorball, a game that’s wildly popular in Europe in general and Finland in particular. It’s a game that is an indoor cross between bandy and hockey, basically floor hockey that is played with a ball that has holes and with sticks that are also perforated to eliminate resistance.

Rantanen was an outstanding floorball player growing up, one of the best in the country until he stopped playing competitively at 14 to concentrate on hockey. But now, Rantanen considers himself to be the third-best floorball player in his family. His older sister, Laura, and younger sister, Noora, both teachers, are among the top female floorball players in Finland. Their TPS Turku team, which has been financially supported by their brother, has won the past two Finnish championships. And in early December, Laura was part of the national-team roster that was scheduled to play in the Women’s World Championship in Singapore.

Lehkonen claims Rantanen’s floorball past is a big part of the reason for his current success as a goal-scorer. It has given him the ability to deceive goalies when he has the puck on his stick. “He uses the whole blade,” Lehkonen said. “The puck is going up the blade, and he can decide left corner or right corner, up or down, and the goalies can’t read it. I ordered him to start using that shot more.”

The evolution continues for Rantanen. Technically, Landeskog is still listed as the team captain, but he didn’t play last season and was ruled out for 2023-24 before the year had even started after he underwent cartilage-transplant surgery on his right knee. With Erik Johnson gone, MacKinnon, Makar and Rantanen are effectively the team’s leadership group, with each wearing an ‘A.’ The three of them are indisputably the most important players on the roster, as evidenced by their alternate-captain designations and their pay stubs.

Yeah, about that. The Avs have MacKinnon under contract for this season and seven more after that by virtue of his eight-year, $100.8-million contract extension that carries a salary-cap hit of $12.6 million per season. Makar has four years remaining on his deal with a $9-million cap hit, while Rantanen checks in at $9.25 million with just this season and next remaining on his deal. The Avalanche will be in a position to sign Rantanen to an extension next summer, and another 50-goal campaign would put him in an excellent position for another big-money, long-term deal that could take him to the end of his career.

It will be interesting to see just how much he will be worth on a long-term deal. You’ve got a guy who might go into contract talks this summer with a second straight 50-goal season to his credit. At the same time, he’ll turn 29 early in the 2025-26 season, when that extension would kick in. So there’s plenty of tread left on the tires. “We’ll see where this goes,” Hooper said. “As you know, the cap is going up, and he’s taking his game to an elite level. He’s in a really good spot, that’s for sure.”

But all of that will be taken care of by those whose business it is to negotiate contracts. For his part, Rantanen loves being in the Colorado market, and it’s intriguing to contemplate the possibility that all three of him, MacKinnon and Makar could play their entire careers for the same franchise. The Avalanche, meanwhile, are in a win-now and win-later mode, which makes things all the more enticing.

If things work out, ‘The Moose’ will not be loose. And the Avalanche will be happy to continue to have one of the league’s most unassuming stars on their side of the ice.