DALLAS — Mikko Rantanen doesn’t have a home yet. Not a permanent one, at least. He found somewhere to stay for the rest of the Dallas Stars season — however long that lasts — but some 45 days since he signed an eight-year contract to make Texas his home for perhaps the rest of his career, he still hasn’t done any real house hunting.
“I’ll try to figure out this summer or next season what to do next year,” he said.
This is Rantanen’s life. It’s been a constant cascade of chaos for four months — dealt away from the only NHL home he’s ever known without any warning; sent across the country to an unfamiliar city in Raleigh; called to Montreal for the 4 Nations Face-Off before he could even catch his breath; traded again by Carolina after just 13 games because his uneasiness made the Hurricanes uneasy; signed to a life-changing contract in Dallas. He’s played for four teams in four months, counting Team Finland. He’s learning a new city. Learning new teammates. Learning new linemates. Learning new systems. Learning to play without Nathan MacKinnon. Learning that (deep sigh) he probably could have just stayed in Colorado and avoided all this mess for nearly the same contract had there just been some better communication.
And just as his head stops spinning for a moment, he’s in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Against a bunch of his closest friends. With the hockey world questioning his legacy and his heart and his mettle and his reliance on MacKinnon’s singular brilliance. As Stars coach Pete DeBoer said, “He’s got a lot on his plate.”
And you know what? Eighteen points in 20 games to close out the season wasn’t too bad, all things considered. DeBoer said Monday morning that while a seamless transition was never realistic, Rantanen is frankly doing better than he expected when he first walked into the Stars dressing room, dazed and ego-bruised.
“I don’t think anyone should be surprised that this hasn’t come easily and all at once,” DeBoer said. “He played in one place for almost a decade, and he played with one guy (MacKinnon) for almost a decade. And that guy — no one else in the league has that guy, that plays that exact game. You’ve been working off a certain partner like that for a decade. It’s not an easy transition.”
DeBoer then repeated that last part for emphasis.
“It’s not an easy transition.”
To his credit, Rantanen has handled his life turning upside down with class and aplomb. He worked hard and played well in Carolina, even though he clearly wasn’t thrilled to be there and even though the puck wasn’t going in for him. He showed up in Dallas slightly bewildered but excited, ready to work. And he’s spent the last four days answering the same questions over and over and over, openly and honestly and without even the slightest hint of annoyance in his voice. He’s been a professional, a grown-up, a class act just doing his best. Off the ice, Rantanen couldn’t be handling the scrutiny any better.
Professional athletes are human beings, too. They have lives and partners and feelings like anyone else, and not even $96 million can completely cushion the blow of having your world upended against your will. Rantanen figured his life and career were set, and then he was thrown for a hell of a couple of loops.
“It’s not easy in anybody’s life if there’s uncertainty,” he said. “If you’re a hockey player or a football player or a plumber or a writer, if there’s uncertainty, it’s always hard mentally.”
It’s easy to sympathize with him. It’s easy to root for him, too.
And yet …
The playoffs wait for no man, and hockey can be a cruel, zero-sum game. Rantanen has zero points and is a minus-3 through two playoff games, including Monday’s 4-3 overtime victory over the Colorado Avalanche, which evened the series 1-1. Rantanen has looked passive on the power play, hesitant with the puck on his stick. There are flashes of his old self. He laid a big hit on Erik Johnson in the first period of Game 2. He had a great look off an Alex Petrovic rebound in the second period but missed the net. He made a heck of a power move to the net on Ryan Lindgren later in the period, somehow managing to hold onto the puck, but he didn’t generate a shot or even a chance off it. He’s not the player he was, the player who starred for the Avalanche for nine seasons, the player Dallas threw all that money at.
And the fact is, it’s understandable why Rantanen has been just a little off, just a little less.
But it’s also unacceptable. And there are 96 million reasons why.
A still-getting-his-feet-beneath-him Rantanen is still a really good Rantanen. But really good isn’t really good enough. Not against the revamped and resurgent Avalanche. Not against MacKinnon. Not when your No. 1 defenseman (Miro Heiskanen) and your No. 1 left wing (Jason Robertson) are injured. Not when you’re the highest-paid, most-accomplished postseason performer on a team built to win the Stanley Cup.
The Stars need the dominant, Hall of Fame-bound, bull moose of a power forward that Rantanen was for so many years and so many postseasons in Colorado. That kind of pressure is the last thing Rantanen needs on his already frazzled mind, but it comes with the territory once you put ink to paper.
Dallas might be deeper than most teams, and DeBoer did his best to alleviate that pressure, saying, “We need him, but he’s not going to win this series for us single-handedly.”
The truth is, however, he’s one of the few players who can.
“Smart player, creates a lot,” said linemate Jamie Benn. “He attracts a lot of attention out there. Good players do.”
Rantanen’s attracting plenty of attention everywhere these days, the microscope turning the bright spotlight into a scalding heat ray. He’s handling it beautifully off the ice. Less so on the ice.
And don’t underestimate the Colorado part of all this. Going up against your old team is always strange, but in these circumstances, in this heightened atmosphere, it’s almost unfathomable. Surely Rantanen never expected to be mixing it up with Cale Makar the way he did in Game 1.
“It’s different now, for sure,” Rantanen said. “Good friends off the ice, but for however (long) this series takes, we’re obviously enemies.”
Rantanen said that’s “fun.” But it’s also wrong-footing, disorienting. It’s not unique to Rantanen, the stakes are just higher at his level. Colorado’s Joel Kiviranta experienced it last spring in his first year with the Avalanche. He didn’t have quite the track record in Dallas that Rantanen had in Denver, but he spent the first four seasons of his NHL career with the Stars, and became a folk hero of sorts with five postseason goals as a rookie in 2020. It’s easier now, the second time around, but last year’s six-game loss to the Stars was an absolute mind-flayer for Kiviranta.
Those were his best friends.
“In the regular season when we played each other, we’d always go to dinner, all the Finns,” Kiviranta said. “But not in the playoffs. You talk before the series, but for like two weeks? No friends.”
The home and visitor rooms are just a few steps from each other in American Airlines Center. It got so awkward, Kiviranta went out of his way to avoid even seeing his old buddies.
“I’d go the other way around,” he said with a sheepish laugh.
That’s human. That’s real. That’s what Rantanen is dealing with now — on top of everything else. Add it all up, and in any normal setting it would be an entirely valid excuse for not being your best self. For being human.
But this is the Stanley Cup playoffs. Normal doesn’t describe it. And human doesn’t cut it.
So you can root for Rantanen. You can empathize with him. You can understand him.
But you can also expect a lot more of him. The Dallas Stars certainly do.
(Photo: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
