Antti Raanta has done one huge thing to gain my respect. He’s taken responsibility for his lackluster play. Raanta was quoted after a win on February 15, 2020 stating, “The win feels good and how the game went, but obviously, you also have to be like this every night. You can’t play one good game; couple bad ones. The consistent level has to be higher.”
As a critic, this is the goal, to point out the issues so that they can be addressed. Many individuals in sports refuse to acknowledge any issues, usually to the detriment of the team. Raanta should be given a huge amount of credit for not taking the easy route and dancing around issues in interviews.
Since Raanta’s acknowledged what we all know, let’s take a look at his performance in February thus far. Keep in mind that the time of writing is just after Arizona defeated Tampa Bay at home 7-3.
Raanta has played in nine games to this point and posted a 5-3-1 record with around a 1.88 goals against average and .941 save percentage. Raanta recorded a shutout and gave up less than two goals in four of those nine games. In fact, Raanta gave up less than three goals in 66% of those games. This is an improvement from the 58% of the time he surrendered three goals or more in his first twelve games played in each of the last two seasons.
Raanta made thirty or more saves in four of those nine starts. Half of those games saw Raanta make forty-two or more saves. Taking a look at his save percentage over those nine games, there was only one game in which he recorded under a .900 save percentage. This stretch of hockey has been objectively great for Raanta. That being backed by almost all of the numbers.
The only statistic that shines any negative light on Raanta is the amount of games that he gave up consecutive unanswered goals. To elaborate slightly, this number is referring to the amount of times Raanta gave up two or more goals before Arizona scored to answer back. Raanta gave up consecutive unanswered goals in five of nine games, giving him a rate of 55%.
That is deflating for the team in front of him. Take for example the game on Tuesday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Arizona had a 3-1 lead on the visiting Lightning in the game’s second period and within a two minute span, gave up two goals to Ondrej Palat and Brayden Point.
Allowing Tampa Bay to tie the game easily could’ve used that momentum and won the game. Luckily, Brad Richardson scored to retake the lead not long after, but that should in no way excuse the poor couple of minutes from Antti Raanta.
Other than that one aspect of his game during this stretch of games, Antti Raanta has been working hard lately to address his shortcomings over these last two seasons. He’s on the doorstep of reclaiming his potential from 2017-18, but Darcy Kuemper will be back soon. So Raanta’s time to retake the team is closing quickly and his overall performance this season isn’t going to be enough to do so. That being said, Raanta really needed this stretch and it’s much appreciated. Good work Antti. Keep it up.