Dallas – And to think, there were about a week there when everyone in hockey wondered if Mikko Rantanen was going to show up in this series.
Rantanen scored three goals in the third period – two Solo Herculens efforts and an empty net – to erase a deficit of two goals, and also helped the goal of Wyatt Johnston to play at 3:56 to give Dallas stars a remarkable 4-2 victory in match 7 of this Titanic series in the first series against Colorado Avalanche. Dallas goes to face the winner of Jets-Blues on Sunday evening, while the Colorado returns to his house in shock, having lost his biggest rival for the second consecutive year.
Rantanen, subject of the two most shocking trades of the year – first from Colorado to Caroline, then from Carolina to Dallas – buried her old team. After having published a single assist in the first four games in the series, Rantanen closed with five goals and six assists in the last three, reminding his former teammates what they lack without him. His third period was one for ages.
Life had been sucked in the American Airlines Center after Nathan Mackinnon scored his seventh goal of the series on a delayed penalty in the first minute of the third period. But at 7:49 am from the third, Rantanen crossed the middle of the ice and beat Mackenzie Blackwood – who had made several brilliant stops – with a sensational snipe, a shot in a shot from the upper corner of the goal. Six minutes later, Rantanen blew three Colorado penalty killers and scored on an enveloping, loosening his shot in the skate of Samuel Girard. It was an appropriate goal for Dallas, who had seen the avalanche score at least three fluist goals from the series, including the winner of match 6, a goal from Sam Steel off the shoulder of Colin Blackwell.
The moose does not need help !!! 🫎🫎🫎🫎🫎🫎 pic.twitter.com/vqtlejmqz2
– X – Dallas Stars (@dallasstars) May 4, 2025
It will be a long off -season for the avalanche, a fashionable choice to win the Stanley Cup despite the third in the central division and away their future temple of clutch renown, Rantanen. A dramatic overhaul of the mid-season of their list had given them depth to the center (Brock Nelson, Charlie Coyle, Jack Drury) and the goal (Blackwood, Scott Wedgewood), they needed to straighten the ship. They were atrociously close to the closure of this one after keeping their season in life with a victory for match 6 at home, but instead, they wonder what could have been.
The stars, on the other hand, are set up for a deep race. They managed to beat the powerful avalanche without their best defender, Miro Heiskanen, and one of their best scorers, Jason Robertson. The two patinated the team and could return to the second round against Winnipeg or St. Louis.
Avs Was Eye early luck
The two teams had mainly been under the control of this series, with very few extracurricular paras as in, let’s say, the Tampa-Florida series. But Jamie Benn made a potentially disastrous error when he overlooked Valeri Nichushkin in the middle of the first period. He obtained a well -deserved double minor (would have been difficult to challenge an adult), putting the stars in a risky place at the start of the game.
But the penalty of the Kill stars held firm. It was not easy, because Johnston had to save a goal by breaking a pass from Martin Necas Cross-Goalmouth to a Gabriel Landeskog Grand Open, but the Colorado came empty. Just as he did in match 3, when Mason Marchment obtained a double minor for Nelson raised in the last minute of the regulation.
The Colorado power game was eighth in the league in the regular season, marking a clip of 24.8%. But he entered the match 7 14th among the 16 qualifying teams with a meager conversion rate of 15.8%.
Kill him on the kill
The AVS could not do it on the power game, but they could certainly on the penalty. After Sam Malinski interfered with Roope Hintz and landed in the penalty box, it was Colorado who seized the moment, with Josh Manson, of all people, scoring the first goal of the match in hand.
But it was Logan O’Connor – Who else? – Who did it. O’Connor was an absolute series threatening All, especially on the penalty. And when Hintz left the washer to the point after Rantanen has already started to descend the wall, O’Connor jumped on the error, grabbing the washer and running on the left side of the ice. He stopped short in the offensive zone, then threw a centering pass to a hard manson. Manson’s shot hit the post, then struck Jake Oettinger on the back and entered – another strange rebound in a series full of them for the star goalkeeper.
It was Manson’s second goal in as many games (he had one of the two empty nets of Colorado in match 6). The defensive defender had only one goal all the regular season. For O’Connor, it was his sixth point in the series, just behind Mackinnon for the avalanche. He had a short -term goal in his in match 4 and also scored in match 2.
Large names, small production
Aside from a second vertiginous period of match 6, when Rantanen and Hintz combined for 8 points, some of the biggest names in Dallas were not really in this series. Rantanen finished with a top of 12 points (five goals, seven assists) against his former team, and Hintz scored four goals and three assists. Johnston scored three goals and four assists in a solid effort.
But Matt Duchene, the top scorer of the stars in the regular season with 82 points in 82 games, had no goal and three assists – although the last one was a Doozy, trying Johnston’s goal with a cross flow. Mikael Granlund, another splashing commercial acquisition, had a goal and a decisive pass. Marchment, a scorer of 22 goals, obtained a goal and two assists, and Tyler Seguin, after deciding hip surgery, made two goals and two assists.
Mr. Match 7 Wyatt Johnston! He is only 21 years old! pic.twitter.com/gsy8oqs6rg
– X – Dallas Stars (@dallasstars) May 4, 2025
Colorado also had a lot of disappointing producers. Cale Makar, Norris’s favorite of 30 goals, had only one goal, an empty netter. Nelson, the greatest acquisition of the deadlines of the AVS, did not score in the series. And Necas raised four assists, but just one goal. Even Mackinnon tied up a franchise record with seven goals in a series was not enough to overcome this.
Heiskanen not quite ready
Heiskanen’s potential return was a point of discussion every day in this series, raised at each press conference by Pete Deboer, day after day. Heiskanen patinated throughout the series, joined the team for training and morning skates very early, even shot in the power game in the last stages. But he never returned, and internally, the stars did not hold back their breath, nor did not come to the ice every day wondering if it was the day when Heiskanen returned to save them.
“No, we don’t want to put it too much,” said the recruit Lian Bichsel. “It must go through its rehabilitation, it must be 100% to return. We just have to be patient with him. ”
Bichsel said Heiskanen was “really positive” despite the obvious frustrations that come with playoff matches. Deboer, on the other hand, said that the call was never his first. After all, Sunday marks three months since Heiskanen surgery and the initial prognosis was three to four months.
“I mean, there is really no decision,” he said before match 7. “It is not a decision of a player. There are doctors involved, people have to sign things. He has undergone serious knee surgery. If he plays in the near future here, he was going to not put him in damage, and the doctors have not been made. But it’s different to jump in a match 7.
Heiskanen and Robertson – Dallas’ best defender and one of his best attackers – both got closer, but not close enough.
“We just have to win matches so that they can come back,” said Bichsel. “We work our asses for (Heiskanen), for Robo, for all the guys who came out, so that they have the chance to play.”
Bichsel in the scary: “was not so bad”
The world of hockey feared the worst when Bichsel was motionless on the ice at the start of the second period of match 6 after having crashed in the boards while fighting Drury for the Washer.
Bichsel’s return for the third period was just as shocking.
Speak with Athletics After the morning skating on Saturday, Bichsel said that he was “good” and that he had minimized the injury – or his absence.
“I fell, was struck, got up again and played the third period,” he said. “It was not so bad.”
Of course, between “Got Hit” and “Stopped itself again”, a few minutes ago when Bichsel did not move.
“We just had to breathe,” he said.
So he just brought the wind out of him, then?
“I couldn’t really say,” he said. “I was just confused at the start. Once (the stars the athletic coach Dave Zeis) came, we just crossed routine movements for my neck and all that. Everything was good. So I got up. “
“Confused” is a word of power of the eyebrows at a time of consciousness of the cerebral injury, of course. Bichsel moved slowly and needed help from the ice, but he said that he “felt good” once he was back in the locker room, probably in the quiet room (he refused to go into details).
“We just had to breathe,” he said. “We did tests and I was ready to leave.”
(Photo: Richard Rodriguez / Getty Images)
