Hi All!

Title spoils the discussion topic, as it should, so anyone who want's to TL;DR can skip content below and begin to comment.

I have no love for Avs. You see my flair, those are the rivals of my favorite team. However, I couldn't help but observe and note with fascination their progression though the bottom years, how they ascended into dominant Stanley Cup champion and then regressed into their current "contender or pretender?" status. And out of all of that, I find Mikko Rantanen to be the most interesting piece of their puzzle, and where does he slots in Avs (and Hockey) legacy.

Quick Rundown as of summer 2004:

Mikko Rantanen

NHL Regular Season Stats:

GP: 570

G: 262

A: 355

Pts: 617

Ppg: 1.08 - currently 44th of all time in that regard, active players ahead of him: McDavid, Crosby, Kucherov, Kaprizov, Draisaitl, Panarin, Matthews, MacKinnon, Malkin, Marner, Ovechkin

NHL Playoffs stats:

GP: 81

G: 34

A: 67

Pts: 101

Ppg - 1.25 - currently 13th of all time, active players ahead of him: McDavid, Draisaitl, MacKinnon

Numbers alone would make you think he would be a shoe in for HHoF... But is he?

I doubt anyone can argue about his importance to get Avs from the bottom to the top, but ever since that change started happening, Mikko was already partner to Nathan MacKinnon, who was THE superstar. THE savior of the franchise.

Sure, Gretzky had his Messier and Kurri, Crosby has his Malkin, McDavid has his Leon... But, as someone who follows the league, but not the Avs specifically, I haven't seen many people saying that Mikko is on that level of super-partnership. From my perspective, it was always more of a Nathan MacKinnon show, feat. his trusty sidekick Mikko.

Then Cale Makar arrived, taking the league by the storm. Avs smashed the 2021-2022 season, MacKinnon got his due praises for his playoff heroics (that "fuck it, I'm taking over the game" coast-to-coast goal against Blues in game 5 - wow), while Makar still earned his Conn Smythe Title - Mikko wasn't even the sidekick at that point, he became the third amigo.

I'll go out on a limb and say, that unless Mikko has a hidden another gear on him, or Mac and Cale will drastically decline, Mikko will be forced to be always the Third Best on this Avalanche team, and he will not win any Hart or Conn Smythe, regardless of the season.

I'm genuinely curious, and would love to see your opinion: Will that matter for his legacy? I've seen plenty of "HoF vs Very good" debates regarding many players, and individual hardware was commonly used to gauge the merit of the candidate. Mikko will get no hardware, probably, it just happened to be this way when you play next to two All-Time greats. Assuming he'll stay an Av along Mac and Cale for the rest of his career, will he crack the HHoF threshold?

Ps. Additional curveball - In last couple of years, I've noticed frustrated Avs fan during playoff runs saying, that Mikko often scores garbage points, and is shit defensively. Can that also impact his legacy, if he won't pick up his defensive game together?