With Stars' offense dormant — and Roope Hintz possibly out — it's time for Mikko Rantanen to carry them again

New York Times

24-05-2025

DALLAS — Connor McDavid was stalking in the defensive zone, waiting for an outlet pass, a chance to make a break for it — menacing even from 150 feet away. When Jake Walman got the puck with time and space in the corner, McDavid made himself available while skating backward toward the neutral zone — still faster than half the guys on the ice. Walman, bewilderingly, sent the puck elsewhere. But Mikael Granlund lunged for the pass, got his stick on it, and — oops — knocked it right to McDavid at center ice.
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The Edmonton Oilers captain took it in stride — with McDavid, it's always in stride — and off he went, reaching ludicrous speed in a step and a half. Gone? Not quite. Because Dallas' Miro Heiskanen, the best defender on the ice, one of the best defenders in the world, was right there to meet him at the blue line. Heiskanen swiped his stick and knocked the puck loose, up in the air — McDavid casually kept control as if he were skating all alone. Heiskanen steered him to the outside, facing him up like a basketball defender. McDavid never slowed. Heiskanen managed to stick with him every step, maintaining a dangerously tight gap, but McDavid was unflustered. Even with one of the best defensemen on the planet stuck to him, he managed to get off a nasty little snap shot that Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger was just able to get his pad on.
That's McDavid. He's a nuclear weapon, always poised to go off and change a shift, a game, a series.
The Stars have one of those, too. It's Mikko Rantanen, their $96-million man, their trade-deadline acquisition that sent seismic shocks through the rest of the league. He went off against Colorado in the first round, posting five goals and six assists in the last three games of a seven-game epic. He was still smoldering in the second round, when he had his second straight hat trick in Game 1.
Rantanen might not have the speed or the razzle-dazzle that McDavid does — who does? — but he can take over a game in other ways. Through sheer size and strength and hands and will.
And it's high time for him to go off again.
Look, it's absurd to lay Dallas' 3-0 Game 2 loss to Edmonton at Rantanen's feet. It's a little absurd to even point out the fact that Rantanen hasn't scored in five straight games, that he has just two assists in that span, that he's scored just once since that Game 1 hat trick against Winnipeg. After all, Rantanen is tied with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl for the league lead with 20 points this postseason. He's the Conn Smythe Trophy front-runner.
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Dallas isn't even in the conference final without Rantanen. Dallas doesn't even get out of the first round without Rantanen.
But that's the problem. Dallas is built to be an unrelenting current of offense, wave after wave of scoring lines coming over the boards. But we haven't seen that at all in this postseason. They're winning series but they're not dominating them. Rantanen stole the Colorado series. Oettinger stole the Winnipeg series. As a whole, the Stars weren't even the better team for large chunks of both series. They've given up the first goal in 12 of 15 playoff games. Friday night marked the third time they've been shut out in this postseason. They were shut out just once in 82 regular-season games — in the fourth-to-last game of the campaign. We haven't seen anything close to Dallas at full power for anything other than spurts, a period here, a period there.
That third-period explosion in Game 1 the other night? That cathartic slump-buster for so many stymied Stars? After watching Game 2, it feels more like a blip than a breakout. Yes, halfway to the Stanley Cup, you can be a cup-half-full optimist and say that it's great that Dallas has made it this far without being its best self. But the reality is, the Stars are running out of time. Edmonton is too good, too battle-tested, to let them steal another one. The Stars are going to have to take it by force.
'There's definitely another level,' Mason Marchment said. 'There's been spurts, even in (Game 2) there in the second period. We controlled for a majority of the second period, I felt. It's just building and building and keeping the momentum when we have it. We can't just be throwing the momentum away when we have it.'
That's being generous. The Stars looked oddly hesitant in the first period, repeatedly making timid passes that the Oilers pounced on; they had a ghastly 27 turnovers in all. They did fare better in the second, but rarely tested Edmonton's boom-or-bust goaltender, Stuart Skinner, with anything all that dangerous. And in the third period, there was virtually no pushback — on the scoreboard or in the Oilers' faces — after Darnell Nurse knocked No. 1 center Roope Hintz out of the game with a wildly unnecessary slash on the top of the left foot far behind the play.
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Hintz was helped off the ice and carried back to the locker room, never putting any weight on his foot. The officials reviewed it to see if it warranted a major penalty, but only assessed a two-minute minor. Hintz's status is very much up in the air for Game 3 on Sunday in Edmonton. It would be a devastating loss for Dallas if Hintz — who plays on the power play, who kills penalties, who's one of the few Stars who have produced in these playoffs — were to miss time.
'We didn't like it,' Stars captain Jamie Benn said. 'If that was McDavid walking down the tunnel, I would like to see the result of that.'
'Does anyone in this room think if Connor McDavid gets carried off the ice like that, it's not a five-minute major?' Stars coach Pete DeBoer said.
Not a great sign when the postgame quotes are spicier than the on-ice response.
And yet, DeBoer said that he liked his team's game better in Game 2 than he did in Game 1. That's how rough the Stars looked for much of Game 1.
So it falls to Rantanen. If the Stars can't win by committee, the way they always do, the way they're meant to, then it's up to the one guy who's capable of putting a team on his back and carrying it to the Stanley Cup Final. That's not Wyatt Johnston, who's a staggering minus-15 for a team that's won two series. That's not Jason Robertson, who continues to be a shell of his dynamic self since rushing back from a leg injury suffered in the season finale. That's not Matt Duchene, whose Game 1 power-play goal didn't exactly break the dam, after all. And that's not Hintz, who might not even be ambulatory, for all we know.
Unseemly as it seems to criticize him in any way, Rantanen needs to be better now. He needs to be the guy who took over in Round 1, who made a statement to kick off Round 2, who averaged more than a point per game in six straight Avalanche playoff runs. He needs do it in Game 3, and then again in Game 4, and again in Game 5. And on and on until he has the Stanley Cup in his hands. Might not be fair, but that's life at the top, that's the burden of greatness. McDavid and Draisaitl each have a point in all but two playoff games. They get hot, yes, but they never seem to run cold. They're always burning.
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No, zero goals and two assists in five games won't cut it. Not in the conference final. Not against Edmonton. Rantanen was never The Guy in Colorado, not with Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar on his team. But in Dallas, he's very much The Guy. He has to be The Guy. The difference-maker. The nuclear weapon.
It's time to go off. Otherwise, the way the rest of the Dallas forwards are playing, it'll soon be time to go home.
(Photo of Roope Hintz: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)