{"id":454561,"date":"2026-02-11T16:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T16:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/454561\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T16:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T16:56:14","slug":"rantanen-lehkonen-old-friends-reunite-to-face-slovakia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/454561\/","title":{"rendered":"Rantanen & Lehkonen: Old friends reunite to face Slovakia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milan, ITALY \u2014 As the sun begins to peak out of a cloudy day in Italy, we begin the Men\u2019s Ice Hockey portion of the Milano Cortina Winter Games 2026 with a matchup between Team Finland & Slovakia at Milano Santaguilia IHO Arena.<\/p>\n

That means old friends and former teammates Mikko Rantanen and Artturi Lehkonen are set to grace the ice together yet again, and that will be a bittersweet sight for Colorado Avalanche fans who are still getting over The Moose\u2019s dispatching of the Avalanche last postseason.<\/p>\n

According to this lineup sheet, the two will not be featured on the same line, which makes sense with the likes of Hintz and Granlund on the top line with Mikko Rantanen, but if that doesn\u2019t work, Team Finland definitely has options.<\/p>\n

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It does make sense for Finland to go with an entirely Dallas Stars top line and D pair (excluding Grandlund) for familiarity\u2019s sake, but there are elements that Lehkonen brings that some simply aren\u2019t as good at. Mainly the work in front of the net.<\/p>\n

It appears they also won\u2019t be on the same power-play unit, with Mikko on PP1 and Lehkonen on PP2 with Teravainen, Lehtonen, and Tolvanen. But again, all of this should be pretty fluid, especially early on and when partial line changes are the only option.<\/p>\n

I predicted on yesterday\u2019s Mile High Hockey Lab<\/a> that Artturi Lehknonen will be the first men\u2019s goalscorer of Milano Cortina Olympics 2026. Let\u2019s see about that!<\/p>\n

As far as this matchup goes, Finland is 18-1-3 all-time and head-to-head against Slovakia and is the clear favorite here. This group B, however, is a bit of a juggernaut and could be considered \u201cthe group of death\u201d with Gabe Landeskog and Team Sweden also featured.<\/p>\n

That said a win for Team Finland would be vital today with the three group winners and highest ranked 2nd place finisher (inside thier group) getting a bye to the quarterfinals. With a 3-2-1 points system, every game will matter, and most will hope to play as few games as possible while making it to the medal rounds.<\/p>\n

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Let us know what you think of this matchup in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milan, ITALY \u2014 As the sun begins to peak out of a cloudy day in Italy, we begin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[55234,2320,193,192,144,5277,147,5,270,4,4507,15233],"class_list":{"0":"post-454561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-adrian-hernandez","9":"tag-artturi-lehkonen","10":"tag-avalanche","11":"tag-colorado","12":"tag-colorado-avalanche","13":"tag-coloradoavalanche","14":"tag-dallas-stars","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-mikko-rantanen","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-slovakia","19":"tag-team-finland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116053058842760491","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}