Mikko Rantanen's Response to His Military Service Controversy

How big of a deal is this, really?

This whole Mikko Rantanen Missed His Military Service story has been going around a bit over the last week. I’ve talked to a few people about this online, but I’ve been hesitant to write up a whole thing, given the developing nature of it. Today, however, we appear to have some additional clarity, so let’s dig into it and see if we can clear up exactly what happened, and what ought to happen now.

In case you didn’t see Lia’s piece on it last week, the gist of things is this: Rantanen, like all men in Finland, has mandatory military service to do in his native country. He failed to show up on his report-by date on April 15, 2024 (when he was still in the middle of his season with Colorado), and submitted a re-schedule/postponement request later that day, which was approved.

However, because he didn’t submit the form before the date of his service, Rantanen is still eligible to be fined for his failure to report. And on Tuesday, Ilta-Sanomat reported that he was convicted of that failure, resulting in a fine of €33,290, which equates to something like $38,787 in the currency of these United States. (This is much less than the originally reported number of €85,000, by the way.)

The story also notes that the judgment still isn’t final, so things could still change.

This story from Chris Johnston at SportsNet a while ago is a good overview of the tricky nature of this service for Finnish NHLers. You basically need to have a long summer (i.e. No playoffs) and good health in order to devote serious time to taking care of it during your playing career, and Rantanen hasn’t had both of those in a while. He also came over to North America not too long after turning 18, so he didn’t satisfy the service requirements early on, as some players have done.

Here are two of the more salient portions of the linked story, which can be translated for you on Chrome (and probably most web browsers):

Rantanen unlawfully failed to report to his place of service at the Guard Jaeger Regiment by 4 p.m. on April 15, 2024. After the deadline expired, he submitted an application to the Southwest Finland Regional Office to change his service start time. The application was approved on April 16 at approximately 1:43 p.m.

Rantanen denied having committed the crime.

According to his response, Rantanen was not aware that he was ordered to enter service on April 15. Based on a discussion he had with the Sports School's head of coaching in May 2023, he had been under the impression that he should enter service in July 2024 at the earliest.

Rantanen does not remember receiving any information or seeing an order to start service for April 2024 after this. On the morning of April 15, Finnish time, he was contacted by the head of training and informed that he should start service by 4 p.m.

So, there you go. Rantanen is essentially saying that he doesn’t remember getting the notice informing him of the April 15 date, which is why he didn’t submit his postponement application until the day he received the instructions—which I believe he’s saying is the first he heard of that date. However, there is reason to believe he did actually get that first notice, as we’ll see in a moment.

Now, I won’t pretend to know all of the cultural implications of a Finnish hockey superstar winding up in this predicament. If you know anything about Finland’s history, then the national emphasis on military preparedness makes a ton of sense. This is not an idyllic land of peace, far away from conflict. Far from it. Finland could change from the Happiest Country in the World to one besieged by an aggressive and neighboring superpower in an instant; thus, military service is taken quite seriously.

With that said, it is also quite common for athletes to receive exemptions from this service. Roope Hintz is one such athlete, and in fact, so is Rantanen, as the story also notes that Rantanen was exempt from service during “this past summer” (ostensibly that of 2025) for medical reasons, which is not uncommon for NHL players at the end of a season.

From what I’ve gathered after reading a ton of accounts of this story and talking to a couple of Finnish folks, this is less about Rantanen dodging service or anything like that, and much more about Rantanen—again, back in 2024—failing to attend to the details of a notice he received about his service during an NHL season.

Again, from I-S, about the day-of notice he got on April 15, 2024:

[Rantanen] received the instructions at 1:12 a.m. local time, when he was sleeping. Rantanen said he submitted the postponement application immediately after receiving the instructions. The application arrived in the Defence Forces system at 7:12 p.m. Finnish time.

– According to what he said, Rantanen does not remember personally collecting his order to start service and he had not written down the start date anywhere. The receipt of the order to start service shows that the recipient's identity was checked from his driver's license and Rantanen has admitted that the signature on the receipt was his, the court's decision states.

So although Rantanen is saying that he didn’t get the original notice about the 415/2024 date, a receipt bearing his signature indicates that he did receive and sign for that original notice.

And if I’m reading things right, when he got the final “See you bright and early for service by 4:00pm today!” e-mail the morning of April 15, he immediately submitted a postponement application, but not until 7:12pm in Finland. That application didn’t get approved until the next day because of the nine-hour time difference between Colorado and Finland, and thus, he failed to address the situation before the 4:00pm deadline on April 15.

(If I’m reading this all correctly, Rantanen is basically saying this is a relatable experience, much like getting one of those scary PAST-DUE notices in the mail for a bill you didn’t realize you ever got and trying to resolve it after the fact.)¹

Contrary to some less accurate and outright incorrect reports, this appears to be more of a matter of individual inattention and the inexorable wheels of government rather than any massive scandal. (Again, putting aside the cultural implications, which I am not qualified to speak about.) Unless the judgment is altered before being made final, Rantanen will have to pay for failing to read his mail back in 2024, and that seems pretty much justified.

By the way, Finland assesses fines like these as a percentage of one’s salary rather than a flat amount. And in doing some quick math: even if you round up that fine to $40,000, it’s hardly important money for Rantanen, who will be getting paid $15 million in actual compensation this year. That fine would be something like just 0.2% of what he’s getting this year ($5.6 million of which I believe was already paid on July 1 in a signing bonus). For reference, if you were making $70,000 this year, that same percentage would be $187. Not nothing, but also not meaningfully different than any other monthly bill you might pay with a small sigh.

I’m not trying to carry water for anyone here, but my personal opinion from the facts as we have them right now is that Rantanen may have made an oversight, but he wasn’t trying to pull a fast one or anything like that. Everyone in Finland knows about this service, and the postponement/exemption process for NHLers is pretty routine. In this case, a high-profile athlete missed a deadline, so it’s a big story, especially in the offseason. He’s going to have to pay the price for that oversight unless the judgment gets reversed, and really, that all seems pretty much as it should be.

(Interestingly, Rantanen was actually planning to take care of this service in the summer of 2020, but something happened that year to derail those plans. Not sure what, as I recall 2020 being a pretty routine year. Maybe you can think of something.)

If I had to take a guess, I’d say Rantanen cares a whole lot less about the money (a tiny fraction of his wealth) than about the optics of this mistake. When Rantanen and all the other Stars players get back into Dallas in September, perhaps he’ll speak on this further, as Rantanen has, in my experience, been pretty straightforward in answering questions, even when asked the same ones repeatedly by different reporters.

For now, all we can do it wait and see how things finally get settled. It is August, but only for a few more days.

1. Hypothetically, you might then call the place issuing the bill and explain to them that you’d be happy to pay the “past-due” bill, but that you never got the original notice, so can they stop with the excess fees and intimidation tactics? And also, why didn’t your insurance pay the bill, and what are you even paying Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas for if they are refusing to cover their portion of an ER bill because you got admitted to a Seattle emergency room at 11:54pm on March 31, six minutes before your insurance switched over to them at midnight on April 1, even though all the other hospital bills from the injury were dated April 1, and have since been paid by both insurance and yourself? And also, isn’t 11:56pm in Seattle still after midnight in Texas, where your insurance is actually based? And also, can a human being please just acknowledge that I paid my co-pay a full month before I tripped on a stupid staircase right before midnight, rather than dinging me with thousands of dollars on a technicality that is now making me think it actually would have been in my best interests to sit outside the ER with my foot dripping blood for an extra six minutes just so that the form would have read April 1, since no human being is actually able to do anything once a form has a date on it, apparently? Folks, I am starting to wonder if our health care system is as perfect as everyone says it is.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.