The message from the Colorado Avalanche was the same three days after Mikko Rantanen ended its season as it was the day after the club sent him away.
Colorado needed to get deeper. The Avs were not good enough or deep enough to win the Stanley Cup this year at the time of the trade. Negotiations with Rantanen and his agent didn’t yield a new contract that the Avs felt would allow them to be deep enough in the future.
“We felt we had a decision to make,” Avs president Joe Sakic said Tuesday. “We weren’t good enough.