Chris MacFarland tried to find the right words. What have the past couple of days been like for the Colorado Avalanche general manager after shocking the hockey world?
“Well, it’s hard. It’s Mikko Rantanen, right?” MacFarland began Saturday night in an interview with The Athletic. “Everybody knows he’s an incredible talent. He’s an elite winger. His play speaks for itself. No matter what city you live in, in the NHL, you know the name Mikko Rantanen. What makes it tough is the combination of the skill and the player and the person.”
The Avs’ GM went on to talk about how they drafted Rantanen, how he grew up with them, how he was such a big part of a last-place team becoming Stanley Cup champions. And how it was time to cut the cord.
“Those are never, never easy (trades),” MacFarland said. “We wish him the best, because he deserves it.”
Those words came out 24 hours or so after a blockbuster trade with the Carolina Hurricanes (and Chicago Blackhawks), which will be talked about for many, many years. Just like the Joe Thornton trade is still talked about 20 years later.
The similarity in those two blockbusters is how quiet things were before Rantanen was dealt. The assumption was that because the Avs are contenders, they would ride it out and keep trying to sign Rantanen, set to be an unrestricted free agent after this season, right down to the wire, like they did with captain Gabriel Landeskog in July 2021.
Instead, this time around they cut ties with Rantanen in stunning fashion just over five months from July 1, deciding they wouldn’t be able to match his contract demands.
“I don’t know if we can say we couldn’t sign him,” MacFarland said. “I think it was going to be … obviously it was a challenging contract to do. Any time you have a player of that stature, and you have a player of Nathan MacKinnon and his stature and Cale Makar and his stature and (his next contract) on the horizon. We’ve been fortunate to have some recent success. We won in ’22 and got knocked out the last few years. Mikko is a great player and he had the right to be UFA. And we knew that would potentially be a tough deal. We went through a similar situation with Landeskog a few years ago. It went right to the wire.
“Once it gets past the trade deadline, that’s a tough thing. You got to bank on the fact that the player wants to get a deal done and that you can find common ground. Sometimes the closer you get to July 1, they might be more inclined to listen (to other teams) or whatever the case may be.
“It certainly wasn’t easy.”
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Read between the lines, but given what Makar may yield in his next contract before the 2027-28 season, a determination was seemingly made that having three players earning such a big percentage of the cap was not the long-term plan that made sense for the Avs.
And as far as the secretive way these trade negotiations went, it’s also clear the Avs weren’t shopping Rantanen around, per se.
“He had a no-trade list, our ask wasn’t going to be low, and we also know that teams maybe aren’t going to put in that elite, young piece or the high-end piece without an extension (for Rantanen) either,” MacFarland said. “And they obviously controlled that part of the equation. Some other teams might look at it differently than Carolina did, but it certainly played a factor in it.”
His point is that many teams would have wanted to make sure they had Rantanen for more than three months if they were giving up key pieces. And to be clear, the Avs did not allow teams to talk to Rantanen’s camp, led by agent Andy Scott of Octagon, about a possible extension.
“No, no, it didn’t end up there,” MacFarland said.
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All of which really made Carolina the likeliest fit without Rantanen signed and with the Hurricanes willing to take that swing despite that.
“I think the goal for their side and for our side was to try and find common ground, and we knew it was going to be a challenge,” MacFarland said.
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So how many more teams were involved on Rantanen?
“I’m not going to comment on other teams,” said MacFarland. “Were there teams kicking tires? Yeah, there were teams kicking tires. But the players we were going to ask for, I get that an extension would have had to be part of the equation.”
Which again, wasn’t part of the process, so that really kept things more or less to Carolina as a trading partner.
In getting the talented Martin Necas and the young Jack Drury, the Avs have pieces that will be part of the core beyond this season and will fit more smoothly in their evolving payroll puzzle. On the ice, Necas’ dazzling ability to skate and get open and score highlight-reel goals should be a nice fit alongside MacKinnon, which is where he found himself in his first game with the Avs.
“Yeah, Marty is controlled and has another year on his deal at a nice number and you’re right, that’s the thing you’re drawn to (his skill). You watch him play a few shifts and the two things that stand out are his speed through the neutral zone and his shot; those are his two attributes,” MacFarland said. “I think he’s a good top-six option for us. We are drawn to guys that can skate. And he certainly fits that bill. … He’ll have a good role.”
Drury, 24, is a guy the Hurricanes hated having to include in the deal.
“He’s not a big body, but he’s a greasy, competitive guy,” MacFarland said. “He’s a good penalty killer, a good faceoff guy. He’ll hopefully become an integral part of our bottom six and be able to anchor another checking line that can give us some rhythm.”
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But again, their contract situations were huge.
“They’re both young and both controllable,” MacFarland said. “Those were important things for us to add players to this group rather than just do a futures deal.”
Plus, as he noted, the team gained salary cap space, which he hopes to put to use ahead of the March 7 trade deadline but certainly in the summer.
“We’ll see if we can improve the team between now and the deadline,” MacFarland said. “The challenge last week would have been pieces to move and cap space. I think that’s been cleared up a little bit. So we’ll see if there’s a match that we can do.”
So, are the Avs are still competing for the Cup or headed for a transition? Zero hesitation from the Avs’ GM to that question.
“We’re all-in,” he said. “Mikko obviously is a horse. He does things differently than Marty. Marty is going to put up points, and we have more cap space now. We’ll continue to try and put that to use.”
And finally, what of their captain? Gabriel Landeskog hasn’t played since raising the Cup in June 2022 as he continues to recover from a type of knee surgery no NHLer has come back to play from. His initial recovery time the club announced when he had the surgery in May 2023 was 12 to 16 months. It’s been over 20 months.
“Nothing new materially, but I will say he’s continuing the process of skating and the rehab,” MacFarland said. “I know it’s been a long time, and I’m sure everybody — us being first in that line — wants something sort of on the horizon, but it’s still where he’s not in practices. He’s taken some morning skates. He’s certainly skating consistently and continues to grind.”
“The rehab is going well, but there’s nothing material to report on the horizon.”
The Avs still don’t know when or if he will be back this season.
“We do not,” MacFarland confirmed. “Not at this time. He’s got to be getting into regular practices and contact. He’s got to be able to defend himself and move appropriately. Right now, everything is controlled. And hockey is anything but that. There are things he’s going to have to be able to test out and figure out.
“And when that is, I just don’t know. I think he’s the only one that will be able to answer that.”
And that’s no small part of how this Avs team has had to transition over the past few years. Landeskog is such an important voice in that dressing room. And a fearless, talented player on the ice. He and Rantanen and MacKinnon and Makar and Valeri Nichushkin were so crucial to the fabric of that 2022 Cup team.
Now, Rantanen is gone, and there’s still uncertainty on whether Landeskog will play again. And if he is, what version of himself will he be?
It’s been a major weekend in the continued evolution of the Avalanche as a perennial contender. They traded away the sixth-leading scorer in the NHL. But they hope, bigger picture, that they’ve improved their sustainability.
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(Photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
