Rantanen Out Week-to-Week

The Colorado Avalanche announced today that @Mikko Rantanen is out week-to-week with a lower-body injury. Rantanen suffered the injury in Monday’s game against the St. Louis Blues.

Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said the week-to-week timeline felt like the “best-case scenario.” Initial reports speculated that the injury could cost Rantanen somewhere between 4-6 weeks. Bednar added Rantanen will be re-evaluated after receiving treatment. We can expect another update early next week.

While today’s update brought good news, the injury still leaves a huge hole in Colorado’s offense. Rantanen was off to a red-hot start to the season, scoring five times and adding seven assists in nine games. @Nathan MacKinnon and @Gabriel Landeskog will have to carry the load without Rantanen. The pair still managed a 66.67 GF% in just under 100 5v5 minutes without Rantanen in 2018-19. They can remain productive regardless of who’s skating on their right wing.

Lineup Implications

How the injury affects Colorado’s lineup in the short-term remains to be seen. @Andre Burakovsky and @Joonas Donskoi are the leading candidates to replace Rantanen in the interim. They each took shifts in Rantanen’s spot after the injury on Monday, and Donskoi took some first-line rushes in practice on Wednesday. It looks like @Colin Wilson might be receiving a top-six promotion thanks to the injury’s trickledown effect, but it’s worth noting @J.T. Compher was absent from Wednesday’s practice. We should have a better idea of what Colorado’s makeshift lineup will be after practice on Thursday.