{"id":654489,"date":"2026-05-07T20:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T20:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/654489\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T20:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T20:48:08","slug":"stars-mikko-rantanen-suffered-torn-mcl-at-olympics-says-gm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/654489\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars’ Mikko Rantanen suffered torn MCL at Olympics, says GM"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRISCO, Texas \u2014 Mikko Rantanen<\/a> sustained a torn MCL in his knee during the Olympics, an injury that Dallas Stars<\/a> general manager Jim Nill says kept their standout forward from being himself the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

Rantanen missed 15 games\u00a0for the Stars after getting hurt while playing for bronze medal-winning Finland in February. He returned for the final 10 games of the regular season, with one goal and four assists in that span. He then had one goal and six assists when they\u00a0lost their first-round playoff series\u00a0to Minnesota in six games.<\/p>\n

\u201cMajor injury. Came back, he’s very competitive,\u201d Nill said Thursday during his season-ending availability. \u201cDid he come back too soon? Not too soon, but would have been nice to have one or two more weeks to really settle in. He never really got going again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 54 games before the Olympics, Rantanen had 21 goals and 51 assists. The Stars got him in a deadline deal last season, signed him to a $96 million, eight-year extension, and he then had a\u00a0remarkable post-season\u00a0with nine goals and 13 assists in 18 games when they made the Western Conference final for the third year in a row.<\/p>\n

Dallas was done after one round this year, and Rantanen\u00a0wasn’t the only player dealing with a significant injury.<\/p>\n

Nill said Rantanen didn\u2019t have and won\u2019t require any surgery, and will benefit from having some extended time off along with so many of their other players.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never had one game where we had a full lineup this whole season and the playoffs,\u201d Nill said. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Stars also go into an offseason when 45-goal scorer Jason Robertson can become a restricted free agent and with\u00a0longtime captain Jamie Benn\u00a0pondering a decision on whether to return for an 18th NHL season, all in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Other significant Stars injuries<\/p>\n

Top-line centre Roope Hintz missed four games after the Olympics because of illness, then\u00a0tore his left hamstring in two places on March 6\u00a0in his only game since. That was after the Stars in December lost Tyler Seguin to an ACL injury.<\/p>\n

Miro Heiskanen, their top defenceman, missed the final three games of the regular season after an oblique tear and then sprained an ankle during the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Radek Faksa was close to returning from a concussion in the Olympics when his foot got sliced by a skate. He got back for the last two regular-season games and the playoffs, but Nill said the significant laceration may require further surgery.<\/p>\n

Nill said defenceman Nils Lundkvist, who\u00a0took a skate to his face in Game 4\u00a0against the Wild, could have possibly returned had that series gotten to a Game 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cA very lucky man. The skate ended up hitting him, really hit into him more than anything,\u201d Nill said. \u201cHe had stitches inside and outside, but he also had a concussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time to talk to Robertson about a new deal<\/p>\n

Nill plans to reach out soon to Robertson\u2019s agent with the focus of getting the point-a-game forward signed to a new deal.<\/p>\n

While there were some talks last summer, and some progress was made, both sides then agreed to put those on hold until after this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a big part of our team. We drafted and developed him, and we want him to be a Dallas Star for the rest of his career,\u201d Nill said.<\/p>\n

A second-round pick by the Stars in 2017, Robertson has 490 points (213 goals and 277 assists) in 456 regular-season games. That includes three 40-goal seasons before his 27th birthday this summer, a year before he could become an unrestricted free agent.<\/p>\n

Robertson just completed the final season of a\u00a0$31 million, four-year contract\u00a0he got after a training camp holdout in 2022. He played all 328 regular-season games in that stretch.<\/p>\n

Stars want their captain to return<\/p>\n

Benn has been the Stars captain since 2013-14, and like last off-season, has a decision to make about whether he wants to play another season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to give him a couple of weeks, but I want him back. I think he wants to come back,\u201d Nill said. \u201cBut I\u2019m going to give him that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benn, who turns 37 in July, missed the first 19 games because of a punctured lung and his 60 games played were his fewest in a full 82-game regular season. He had 15 goals and 21 assists while\u00a0playing on a one-year deal\u00a0after the end of a $76 million, eight-year deal.<\/p>\n

Hall of Fame center Mike Modano is the only player in franchise history with more than Benn\u2019s 1,252 regular-season games, 414 goals and 992 points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRISCO, Texas \u2014 Mikko Rantanen sustained a torn MCL in his knee during the Olympics, an injury that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-654489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}