NEW YORK — The skates were too big and the stick too short for teenage Mikko Rantanen. He was a talented but not always sure-footed hockey prodigy whose rapid growth spurt was already making it difficult to develop his skating and puck-play — especially surrounded by players who were much older on a Finnish professional roster.
Rantanen’s youth teammates often joked that he fell so much, he looked like Bambi on the ice.
“His balance was a little bit bad then,” teammate Teemu Lamsa remembers.
Factor in the oversized skates and a stick that barely touched the ice?