The Stars will get an extension done for winger Mikko Rantanen and acquire him in a blockbuster deal with the Hurricanes. Per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, it’ll be an eight-year contract worth $96MM, worth a cap hit of $12MM. Jeff Marek of Daily Faceoff reports Dallas is sending rookie forward Logan Stankoven and a pair of first-rounders to Carolina in return. Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff confirms the picks are the Stars’ own 2026 and 2027 selections, leaving Dallas without a first-round pick until 2028.
Dallas thus holds firm at their initial offer to the superstar winger, who will now be traded twice in under two months. Darren Dreger of TSN reported earlier today the $96MM offer was “well short” of what Rantanen would accept to get a deal to the Stars across the finish line. However, he’ll take the under-market value deal to join the league’s deepest offense in Dallas.
Rantanen notably accepts a lesser extension than what Carolina offered him: an eight-year contract worth at least $100MM in total with a $12.5MM AAV. He’ll likely earn more in take-home pay in a lower-tax state in Texas, but it’s still clear Dallas was a preferable long-term destination for the Finnish star.
The 28-year-old finds his long-term home in the same division as his longtime home in Colorado, where he was coming off back-to-back 100-point seasons before failed extension discussions with the Avs precipitated his move to Carolina in January. Colorado’s best offer on an eight-year deal reportedly fell in the $11MM range, so he’s getting more before-tax dollars by meandering his way toward his former Central Division rival.
Rantanen’s reputation needs no introduction, especially since the scale of a player of his caliber moving mid-season was covered extensively when he was traded to the Canes. The 2015 10th overall pick and 2022 Stanley Cup champion with the Avs has produced well over a point per game over his 10-year career, including a raucous 371 points in 299 games since the beginning of the 2021-22 campaign. On a per-game basis, only Nikita Kucherov, David Pastrňák, and Mitch Marner have scored more over the past decade among right wings.
Despite keeping up his production in Colorado whenever he was briefly separated from franchise center Nathan MacKinnon, he simply didn’t click alongside Sebastian Aho during his short stint in Raleigh. Rantanen managed just 2-4–6 in 13 games for the Canes, shooting at 5% and averaging under 20 minutes per game for the first time since the 2020-21 campaign. His possession impacts were expectedly sterling, posting a 64.1 CF% at even strength, but it just didn’t translate to the point totals he’s used to producing.
Rantanen should immediately slot in as Dallas’ first-line right winger alongside Roope Hintz and Jason Robertson, filling the hole vacated by Joe Pavelski when he retired last offseason. They’ve rotated multiple players in that role throughout the season, including Stankoven, while also elevating Evgenii Dadonov and Wyatt Johnston from their usual third-line homes at times to ride shotgun. That instability will end with the Robertson-Hintz duo receiving their most talented complement yet out of an already fairly strong group over the course of their careers.
Carolina has now remained unable to upgrade their top-six throughout the year, taking a winding road from Martin Nečas to Rantanen to now, presumptively, the 22-year-old Stankoven getting an extended run in first or second-line minutes barring a subsequent trade. They will open up roughly $3.8MM in cap space in the trade, assuming no other roster players are involved.
Stankoven is a significant loss for the Stars in this deal off their active roster. After performing well in a late-season call-up last year, he’s posted 9-20–29 in 59 showings for Dallas in 2024-25 while averaging north of 15 minutes per game. Selected 47th overall in 2021, he’s already outperforming his draft billing. He’s a significant injection to a Hurricanes pool of U-23 players that already ranks among the strongest in the league. Dallas, though, determined him expendable to land a top-line talent with names like Johnston and Mavrik Bourque still in the system as current and likely future top-six threats.
More to come…