{"id":570706,"date":"2026-03-28T21:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T21:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/570706\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T21:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T21:02:09","slug":"rantanen-back-in-stars-lineup-for-1st-time-since-feb-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/570706\/","title":{"rendered":"Rantanen back in Stars lineup for 1st time since Feb. 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PITTSBURGH &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/mikko-rantanen-8478420\" title=\"Mikko Rantanen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mikko Rantanen<\/a>\u00a0will return from missing 15 games with a lower-body injury when the Dallas Stars face the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena on Saturday (5 p.m. ET; Victory+, SN-PIT).<\/p>\n<p>The 29-year-old forward last played for Dallas on\u00a0Feb. 4, before being injured on Feb. 20 while playing for Team Finland against Team Canada in the semifinals at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Rantanen has 69 points (20 goals, 49 assists) in 54 games this season, third on the Stars behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/jason-robertson-8480027\" title=\"Jason Robertson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jason Robertson<\/a> (85 points; 39 goals, 46 assists) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/wyatt-johnston-8482740\" title=\"Wyatt Johnston\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wyatt Johnston<\/a> (78 points; 40 goals, 38 assists).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the team, where we are now, it\u2019s going to be a big boost to get him back,\u201d Dallas coach Glen\u00a0Gulutzan said.<\/p>\n<p>The Stars (43-18-11), who have clinched a berth into the Stanley Cup Playoffs, are 9-4-2 without\u00a0Rantanen but have lost four in a row, including three straight in regulation. They are second in the Central Division, nine points behind the Colorado Avalanche.<\/p>\n<p>Gulutzan said the lineup could look significantly different with Rantanen reintroduced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told all the guys here today, we\u2019ve got lines,\u201d\u00a0Gulutzan said. \u201cI just said, \u2018There\u2019s going to be a lot of shuffling of the deck chairs. The beauty of that is I\u2019ve done it all year, so they\u2019re used to it. We\u2019ll just find some matches that work. &#8230; We\u2019ll mix and match until we see what\u2019s working.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a time of year, anyway, that all guys have got to start looking the same with the way we do things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before the injury,\u00a0Rantanen had six points (one goal, five assists) on a five-game point streak from Jan. 27-Feb. 4. He has 41 points (10 goals, 31 assists) in 31 games since Nov. 28.<\/p>\n<p>Selected in the first round (No. 10) by the Avalanche in 2015,\u00a0Rantanen has 774 points (314 goals, 460 assists) in 706 NHL games. He won the Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022 and was named an NHL All-Star in 2019 and 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Rantanen has 87 points (25 goals, 62 assists) in 74 games with the Stars since being acquired in a trade from the Carolina Hurricanes on March 7, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH &#8212; Mikko Rantanen\u00a0will return from missing 15 games with a lower-body injury when the Dallas Stars face&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-570706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}