BOSTON — It wasn’t peak Colorado Avalanche on Saturday afternoon in Boston, but how could it be? Barely 16 hours after Colorado traded star wing Mikko Rantanen to the Hurricanes in a blockbuster deal, the Avs had to hit the ice for a day game. Not only did that come after a fitful night for the remaining Avalanche players but it meant Martin Necas and Jack Drury, the two roster pieces who came back from Carolina in the deal, had to play bleary-eyed after an early-morning flight from New York.
More than once in the visitors’ room after the Avs’ 3-1 loss to the Bruins you heard the phrase, “Didn’t get much sleep last night.” And not in a good way.
“We played at one today, we play at one tomorrow (against the Rangers in New York), there’s not a lot of thinking to be done about it,” Devon Toews said. “Anytime you lose a guy like (Rantanen), a guy you won a Cup with, a great player and a close friend, it definitely hurts to lose him. You have a special bond with those guys. We’re going to miss him.”
“I was trying to go to bed a lot earlier than I ended up,” said Nathan MacKinnon, who rode side-by-side with Rantanen through nearly a full decade. “You’re just kind of wound up, your adrenaline’s going, you’re upset. You’re shocked. It’s a lot of different emotions.”
The Rantanen trade sent shockwaves through the league and this franchise. Contract negotiations began last year and almost immediately there was word that came out not so subtly that Rantanen was interested in the same deal that Leon Draisaitl got in September: eight years at $14 million per. With MacKinnon locked in at $12.6 million per, even a huge jump in the salary cap over the next three years meant $14 million plus $12.6 million plus whatever Cale Makar wants when he’s up in 2027 — $16 million? $18 million? — that the Avs might be stuck paying their big three 40-45 percent of the cap while trying to fill out an already-too-thin roster.
GM Chris MacFarland said Saturday afternoon that the Avalanche needed to get deeper, not necessarily more entrenched with their stars. “There’s nothing done in a vacuum,” he said. “Mikko earned the right to be an unrestricted free agent and he’s five months away from that. You’ve got to make these hard decisions. The player has to make them, the club has to make them and that’s what we did. Getting two cost-controlled assets was important. We got a top-six guy and a good bottom-six guy and away we go.”
Morgan Geekie sweeps home Pastrnak’s perfect cross-crease pass for his 2nd goal of the game, 2-1 Boston!#NHLBruins pic.twitter.com/GtKfPPuAkr
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Necas slotted into Rantanen’s spot alongside MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin and didn’t look out of place, other than a right-shot No. 88 where a left-shot No. 96 would normally be. There were some miscommunications — Necas and Toews both went to the same side of the Avs net in the third, allowing David Pastrnak to find Morgan Geekie for the eventual game-winner by the Bruins — but Necas, who was the hottest player in the league the first month of the season, did not look out of place.
“It’s pretty impressive to be out there with two of the best players in the world,” Necas said of MacKinnon and Makar. “You can see it every day when you play against them, it’s fun to be out there with them. I just have to find my legs a little bit, get some sleep and be good tomorrow.”
Jared Bednar said there were maybe five minutes of systems talk with Necas and Drury, who centered the third line between Ross Colton and Logan O’Connor. The Avs had the puck the majority of the game Saturday, limiting the Bruins to eight shots through two periods before a couple of letdowns in the third. Between the on-ice adjustments and off-ice emotions, no one felt it was a bad effort.
“I thought they did a nice job with their focus,” Bednar said. “You get some good players to come in and help us but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
The other offshoot of this mega-deal is now the Avs, already shown to be more aggressive than most of the league, have some cap space now in long-term injured reserve — $5.6 million according to PuckPedia. The Avs also added a 2025 second-round pick from the Canes in this deal, giving Colorado the Hurricanes’ and Rangers’ second-rounders this year.
“We’re always looking to get better and certainly over the next few weeks, that won’t change,” MacFarland said. “There’s obviously a few more bullets in the draft-pick cupboard now, and some cap space. It’s not easy to make trades in this league. So we’ll continue to look and if something makes sense, then we’ll certainly strike.”
MacKinnon scoffed a bit at the idea that Rantanen was asking for more than MacKinnon currently makes and how that may have been a red line for MacFarland and the front office.
“Anyone who really knows me knows I don’t care about money,” MacKinnon said. “It’s the last thing on my mind. And whoever’s up, I mean, if Cale gets 20 (million per), it is what it is. I want guys to get paid. I think (Rantanen) has earned it, Mikko has earned a big payday. He scores 50 goals, 100 points every season. I don’t know exactly what happened. I’ll have to talk to Chris and Joe (Sakic), and I’m sure there’s lots of sides to every story. I just know I’m going to miss him. He’s such a great person. It’s going to be tough.”
Perhaps Rantanen feels differently but the message coming from MacFarland on down to the dressing room was similar to MacKinnon’s thoughts: No one begrudges Rantanen for his contract ask, however large it was. And no one still with this organization will avoid the sting of Rantanen being traded. But that’s the deal.
“We’re all fans of the game, you fall in love with your players,” MacFarland said. “It’s a tough part of the business but that’s the job. You’ve got to feel like what you’re doing is best for the logo and best for the team.
“Mikko was a home run for us for many, many years. I’m not going to sit here and say we’re not going to miss him … It hurts, right? He’s a homegrown talent, a superstar player and a superstar human being. People are going to talk about it. Your heartstrings get tugged, that’s why we all do this. He’s that good of a hockey player and he’s a super human being. He had the UFA card and we just felt, this is what we had to do.”
(Photo of Martin Necas: Steve Babineau / NHLI via Getty Images)
