The Dallas Stars Go All In for Mikko Rantanen and Wyatt Johnston

Four draft picks and Logan Stankoven for...one player. But what a player.

The Stars didn’t sell the entire farm, but it’s near as makes no difference. You won’t be able to go strolling in the the south forty anymore.

And speaking of the farm, the Stars just locked up a major piece of it for another half-decade:

First, the Mikko Rantanen trade. Wow. Wow.

Wow.

This is the biggest move Jim Nill has made in Dallas. That’s not the same thing as the biggest steal, to be clear. Acquiring Mikko Rantanen came at a heavy, heavy cost. This isn’t Patrick Sharp for Trevor Daley, Jason Spezza for Alex Chiasson, or Tyler Seguin for Loui Eriksson and Reilly Smith.

Nill paid a steep price just for the privilege of paying Mikko Rantanen $12 million for the next eight years after this one. That price? Four draft picks—two first-rounders and two third-rounders—as well as one of their top rookies in Logan Stankoven. Those went to Carolina, who probably needs to flip at least one of those firsts to bring in more forward help if they don’t want a riot in their dressing room.

The thing is, you don’t really care. Because Rantanen is the sort of player that isn’t normally available. Not even abnormally available, really. And this trade for a bona fide superstar has been part of a journey that’s been the furthest thing from normal.

Colorado’s decision to move on from Rantanen was shocking, as much to fans as it was to Rantanen himself, by all accounts. A protracted contract negotiation was cut short when the Avalanche decided to prematurely bail on Nate MacKinnon’s right wing in favor of Martin Nečas, who has another year of team control remaining on his contract.

That move was a seismic one on its own. But the decision from Carolina to flip Rantanen after just a month of trying him out was even more shocking, and that’s why I was always skeptical it would happen.

My skepticism was rooted in the Stars’ hesitance to meet asking prices for players like Seth Jones, who would have helped them shore up a defense that isn’t quite as strong as last year’s (as is true of any defense than had Chris Tanev and no longer does).

Turns out, I underestimated just how all-in the Stars are ready to be. Jim Nill went into the Trade Manager portion of the video game and just kept throwing picks into the bucket until the scales evened out.

Eric Tulsky (and Tom Dundon) will have to answer to their fans for this wild sequence, but as for the Stars, they have no apologies to make. Jim Nill just acquired a superstar.

Mikko Rantanen has scored 1.2 points per game in the playoffs in his career, including the 2020 run when MacKinnon was injured for a good bit of it. He’s a stud right winger who has been playing 22 minutes per night, and who played 24 minutes a night in last year’s playoffs.

Rantanen has also been otherworldly in the regular season, surpassing 100 points for the last two years. Currently, he’s at 70 points through 62 games, and honestly, he could put up another 30 points in the last 20 games with the way the Stars’ offensive has been cooking.

That’s the sort of player that makes GMs compromise their principles, and Jim Nill certainly did that.

The draft picks are ones the Stars will miss, but not for a while. And Logan Stankoven’s struggles to score in his first full season have only heightened the reality that sometimes, players don’t take that final step, and their value never comes close to their potential. Nill, this time, decided to cash in the potential of Stankoven for the reality of Rantanen.

There’s every chance that Stankoven goes to Carolina and turns into a great young player for a very long time. That’s a risk that the Stars were more than willing to take, given the return.

The other cost that will be reckoned with will come in the summer, when the $12 million now on the books will make for some very, very tough decisions. Nill had been adamant that bringing in Erik Karlsson or Seth Jones wouldn’t have been possible for the Stars’ current cap plans, so that means bringing in Rantanen only happens if they have an idea of what money is moving out in exchange. Jason Robertson is the obvious name to keep an eye on, but that’s a conversation for another time. Right now, the Stars are primed to have the deepest and best forward group in the playoffs. That doesn’t solve all of their problems, but sometimes you can make your F1 car faster not by fixing a flat tire, but by strapping a rocket to its roof and lettin’ it fly.

By the way, Wyatt Johnston is about be extended for the next five years, too. That walks him right to free agency, when he’ll be poised to make a bucket full o’ money himself. But that’s in the future. For now and the next few years, the Stars will have Johnston and Rantanen and Heiskanen and Oettinger and Hintz. You can do a lot of good things with a core like that.

How the money all works long term will be A Thing To Discuss, and we will. But for the moment, the Stars have made their team better right now in exchange for tougher decisions in the future. And as some guys named Jarome Iginla and Joe Nieuwendyk once taught us, sometimes you have to live for the moment. And what a moment it is, for Stars fans.

Even before Tyler Seguin returns, here’s the lineup Dallas has to deploy in the final 20 games of the season:

Robertson-Hintz-Rantanen
Marchment-Duchene-Granlund
Benn-Johnston-Dadonov
Bäck-Steel-Bourque
Blackwell

Throw a healthy Tyler Seguin in there (and I strongly suspect he will be pretty darn healthy by the end of the regular season), and you’ve got depth for days.

After years of Jim Nill managing to balance the present and future with mastery, he finally refinanced his house to buy a giant yacht. But if the yacht takes his team to the promised land, nobody is going to have a thing to complain about.