Watching The Spreadsheets (And The Games): Is Mikko Rantanen adjusting or getting unlucky?
Or is it something else?
With five points through eight games — interestingly, a similar point pace while he was in Carolina — the questions, early reactions, hot takes, and cold takes are finally starting to trickle in.
Whoa, wait a minute. Was the Mikko Rantanen trade really the answer?
He’s obviously just adjusting. Give it time.
I got a bad feeling about this.
I barely even notice him.
He’s gonna be great. Just you wait.
The top line will get going.
I’m a firm believer in my thesis that nothing about Dallas’ game or the way they play makes sense except in the light of Miro Heiskanen. His lack of offensive outcomes on the PP should not distract from his abundance of offensive juice at even-strength from shift to shift. There’s an obvious and unmistakable gap between the possession team they are with the Finnish star, and without him. So I think that’s at play.
But we’re not here to talk about Heiskanen. We’re here to talk about the other Finn: Rantanen. It’s easy to see how people latch onto specific narratives. Nathan MacKinnon is a great player. A true gamebreaker, and unlike anything Dallas could pair Rantanen with. That makes for a clean story: maybe Rantanen isn’t as good without MacKinnon. He’s also 28. There’s another clean story: maybe he’s not what he once was. Dallas is also his third team in the span of only a few months. That also makes for a clean story: he needs time to adjust. Et cetera.
While these are varying levels of valid in their own way, they’re still lazy as pieces of analysis. We saw this with Carolina. No, Rantanen wasn’t bad in Carolina[/actually]. He was unlucky. His offense was extremely sustainable — in a way I didn’t realize until writing this. The hockey gods simply weren’t rewarding him. Yes, there were nuances within that, but it’s not like there’s nothing happening on ice. Is something similar happening in Dallas? That’s what we’re here to explore: the story on the ice.
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