Colorado Avalanche: Mikko Rantanen Must Become Big-Money Man

The Colorado Avalanche need to get more consistent production from their highest-paid player, winger Mikko Rantanen. He must live up to the confidence that went into that contract.

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Colorado Avalanche winger Mikko Rantanen is a big-money man by virtue of his contract. He and his agent went to battle to ensure he had what turns out to be the biggest contract on the team — $9.25 million for six years. That’s almost $3 million more yearly than the next man up, superstar Nathan MacKinnon.

That fact means Rantanen has a big paycheck to live up to.

It’s hard to gauge how well he did at living up to that paycheck in the regular season. Unfortunately, he missed big stretches of time with two separate injuries. Indeed, he played only 42 of the 70 games the team completed before the NHL pause. He was on injured reserve when the pause was implemented.

He’s reported to be fully healthy now while the Avalanche are in the bubble for the playoffs. So, it’s time for Rantenen to live up to being the team’s best-paid player, the money-man.

Thus far, he’s not quite making it. He’s tied on the team for second place on points, true. He has two goals and four assists for six points. Only MVP MacKinnon has more. However, that tally is for six games, so it includes the round robin.

When the games count, in the first-round series against Arizona, he has his two goals. Two goals in three games isn’t shabby. Is it Mr. Money Man big, though? Mr. MVP has just one, but he also has an additional three assists. And no one watching MacKinnon on the ice is going to say anything other than he steps up when he must. (He sometimes tries to do too much, but that’s a subject for another post.)

As Avs inisider Adrian Dater points out, Rantanen has looked somewhat ineffective and sloppy at times in the series. Indeed, while I was watching him in yesterday’s loss to Arizona, I kept thinking he was reverting back to his rookie season. He was so wobbly on his skates that many of us Avs fans started calling him our baby giraffe. Yesterday, he also looked wobbly with pucks, too.

What’s more, when you look at Rantanen’s two goals, you don’t see big-money plays. The first goal came mostly off the back of Nathan MacKinnon’s hard work:

Now, finishing is important, and Rantanen did just that. So, we’re not going to harp on that goal too much, especially since that finish was a classic, beautiful Mikko Rantanen Special. However, the second goal was just pure luck:

The puck ricocheted off two Coyotes players to get past goalie Darcy Kuemper. Again, though, we’re not going to harp on that fact too much because Rantanen got the puck on the net. You want to see him getting pucks on net.

And, in fact, we’re not going to harp on Rantanen any longer. Paycheck notwithstanding, he’s second only to MacKinnon for Top Cheese on the team, and he knows that.

Mikko Rantanen needs to step up for the Colorado Avalanche in this playoff series against the Coyotes. He has the talent and skill to do that. I’m simply hoping we see a more controlled Rantanen in Game 4.