Dallas Stars Injury Updates, Lineup Projections, and Everything Else We Know about the Returns of Mikko Rantanen, Roope Hintz, and Radek Faksa

The Dallas Stars IR squad is working its way back, slowly

Mikko Rantanen worked out on the ice with Justin Hryckowian, among others, on Tuesday.

Any time a player is out for extended time with an injury, fans want updates on them every day. That’s understandable, especially when those players are key guys, or even superstars. People want to know when players will be back.

Last year, for instance, I (and I’m sure everyone else covering the team) received a myriad of e-mails, tweets, and WUPFHs about “Whither Tyler Seguin?!?” during his months-long recovery from hip surgery. Despite regular answers from Pete DeBoer and Jim Nill about Seguin’s slow process and gradual recovery, folks naturally wanted to read into every step or lack of a step in Seguin’s return.

Nill initially projected Seguin’s recovery to be 4-to-6 months. And in the end, Seguin ended up returning just before the end of the regular season, in mid-April—just over four months after his surgery. It was a remarkable recovery by Seguin, who poured unheard-of amounts of resources, effort, and dedication into his rehab process. To return from an injury like that near the very beginning of his projected recovery window—and to score a game-winning overtime goal just four games into his return—was an incredible accomplishment.

Screencap from ESPN

This year, Seguin’s luck turned against him, as a torn ACL ended his year cruelly and prematurely. And with a month remaining until the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin, three more Stars players are also the shelf facing extended recovery time.

As much for the sake of having a link I can repeatedly send people as anything, let’s go over the injuries, recovery timelines, and projected spot in a re-assembled lineup for each of the injured Stars forwards right now: Mikko Rantanen, Roope Hintz, and Radek Faksa.

Mikko Rantanen

Here’s a clip Michael Dixon posted (before the IOC dragged him off to jail) of what may have happened to Rantanen in Finland’s elimination game against Canada at the Olympics. And yes, Tom Wilson was Involved.

The Stars haven’t said anything beyond “lower-body injury,” as you’d expect. And over the years, I’ve learned that injuries can often be something much different than you might guess from video. They can even be a result of something that happened on a prior play without any apparent reaction. So, I’m not gonna throw out a guess here, but obviously Rantanen did appear to be in some discomfort after this play, and it’s looking like he will end up missing around 4-6 weeks of action as a result of whatever injury he sustained in Italy on February 18.

Now a month out from that, Rantanen is back on the ice. He skated with most of the Dallas Stars in an optional practice on Tuesday, March 17. And while he didn’t travel with the Stars on their current two-game road trip to Colorado and Minnesota, Glen Gulutzan took pains on Monday to say that the decision to keep Rantanen in Dallas this week wasn’t a setback.

“He’s not gonna come on this trip,” Gulutzan said, “So I would say we’re probably in the 10-day-out mark now, more so…even two-week-out mark, now. Initially we thought he might come on this trip, but it’s not a setback or anything. It’s just that Zeis [Head Athletic Trainer Dave Zeis] and those guys, they think we’re gonna push that off a little bit. Better to skate here.”

If you want the blunt math here, Gulutzan referenced ten days and two weeks, which would put Rantanen’s current estimated return around March 26 to March 30. But as always, we’ll have to wait and see what Rantanen looks like when the Stars return to Dallas on Sunday. We could see him be a partial participant in morning skate before they face Vegas, but that’s just a guess for now. Certainly they won’t rush him back.

Roope Hintz

All right, I hope you enjoyed getting those fairly specific dates and timelines, because we’re about to get a bit more vague.

For Roope Hintz’s injury, we have to settle for what can only be called Zaprudian-quality footage of his injury after being tangled up with Nathan MacKinnon in the Stars/Avalanche game in Dallas on March 6:

Here’s a full-speed version from the Colorado broadcast, for additional reference:

I’ve yet to talk to anyone who has found a better angle of this play, as it took place well away from the puck. The key thing to note for diagnostic purposes, however, is how MacKinnon tries to extricate himself from Hintz’s wrap-up by lifting his right leg into Hintz’s left, which causes Hintz to swing around awkwardly before nearly doing the splits:

Anyway, all we know is—you guessed it—Hintz has a lower-body injury.

Here’s what Gulutzan said about Hintz on Monday:

“Everything’s progressing well,” Gulutzan said. “Obviously Mikko’s progressing the quickest, and then I’d say Roope, and then Faks. But all kind of on timeline, hopefully. Rants is skating a little bit. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks, Roope’s skating, and then we can go from there.”

We also know from Gulutzan that Hintz did not require surgery. So what we can say for sure, right now, is that Roope Hintz is expected to begin skating by the end of March, and it sounds like he is likely to be able to return before the playoffs begin.

Once Hintz begins skating, we’ll have a better idea of just how close he is. But right now, I think it’s safe to assume from the information we’ve gotten that he will be in the playoff lineup for Game 1, barring any major setbacks.

Radek Faksa

We don’t have a video of what happened to Radek Faksa, and that means we don’t have two videos.

As you can hear starting at the 5:10 mark in the below video from March 6, Jim Nill gave us our most detailed update on Radek Faksa thus far. And Faksa’s luck in February was rotten indeed.

“Radek got injured in the Olympics,” Nill said, “was coming back and was rehabbing, in a pretty good spot to start playing again, and unfortunately got injured. Got a lower body injury during his skating and working out to get back at it. He’s going to be out.”

Based on initial reports from Czech media in Milan, Faksa’s initial injury at the Olympics was an upper-body injury. That one, which Nill said was nearly healed, appears to be entirely unrelated to the subsequent lower-body injury Faksa sustained at practice in Frisco during the last week of February.

As far as Faksa’s timeline, it is clearly the furthest out of the three forwards right now. Here’s what Nill said on that front, again on March 6.

“I’ll help the coach out so you don’t bug him all the time now,” Nill said, good-naturedly. “Probably out, hopefully just before the playoffs, or right when the playoffs start. That’s what the plan is, but we’ll have to see how the rehab comes along.”

Faksa has been seen in a walking boot in the last week, but anything beyond that is speculation. Working backward from what Nill has said, we can safely assume that whatever Faksa’s lower-body injury is, it came with something like an eight-week recovery timeline at the very earliest.

As with Hintz, we’ll have to wait and see when Faksa starts skating to glean more information. But right now, it doesn’t sound like that’s likely to happen until some time in April. And with the Stanley Cup Playoff officially beginning on April 18, that’s now less than one month away.

Thoughts about a projected healthy lineup

If Faksa does manage to get back for Game 1 of the playoffs, here’s one version of what I’d expect a healthy lineup to look like, as things stand now:

Hryckowian-Johnston-Rantanen
Robertson-Hintz-Bourque
Steel-Duchene-Benn
Bäck-Faksa-Bunting

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger
DeSmith

• Michael Bunting told me that he’s played both wings as recently as this year, so we could certainly see him and Hryckowian get flip-flopped if the coaching staff wants to reunite the 49-53-96 line we were seeing before the Olympic break. I certainly do think we’re going to see Bunting get a bit of runway in the top six once Rantanen (and hopefully Hintz) get back into the lineup, but for today’s purposes, let’s assume the coaching staff opts for familiarity over pedigree.

  • (This is all made-up, anyway. It’s March 20.)

• Colin Blackwell has been healthy-scratched a few times this year. Oskar Bäck has now played for two different head coaches who really seem to like having him in the lineup. Bäck has also played center a bit with Faksa out (along with Arttu Hyry), so Bäck’s positional flexibility as well as work on the penalty kill make him likelier to stick in the lineup.

  • Then again, Blackwell can also play both wings (and has done so this year) and has been a key penalty-killer when he’s in the lineup. So there is a world where he could slot in, too.

• If Faksa isn’t ready for Game 1, I’ll be fascinated to see whether Bäck or Hyry get the nod as fourth-line center. We saw Bäck (and Bastian) slot in against Colorado on the road this week, but with Faksa likely out for another few weeks, I’d wager we’ll see Hyry get some more time down the stretch to prove that he can be trusted in a key spot, come the the postseason.

• As they did last year, the Stars look likely to enter these playoffs with depth. That means a lot of players who got them there will unfortunately end up sitting out most nights. For example, the above lineup would assume the following healthy scratches: Ilya Lyubushkin, Alex Petrovic, Kyle Capobianco, Nathan Bastian, Adam Erne, Colin Blackwell, and Arttu Hyry. That’s a pretty great bench to draw from, if and when needs arise. But it’s also a very tough pill to swallow for a lot of guys who got them to this point. The harsh realities of the playoffs aren’t only about what happens on the ice.