‘It was hard coming back here’: A then-Marshall assistant returns to site of final game before 1970 plane crash
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
GREENVILLE, N.C. — Dwight Flanagan can still see the faces. He has gone back through old game programs and racked his brain to put the faces with the names.
He simply can’t do it.
It’s been nearly 53 years since Flanagan walked to midfield for the coin toss as one of East Carolina’s captains that crisp Saturday afternoon. He shook hands with the Marshall captains, listened to the head referee’s instructions and returned to the home sideline.
“For 60 minutes, you go against those guys, knocking heads, doing everything you can to beat them, and we’re fortunate enough to win a tough, hard-fought game,” said Flanagan, his voice solemn but steady.
“And then you hear the awful news later that night, news that eats at you to this day, all these years later, that those guys get on an airplane and never make it back.”
Through that tragedy on Nov. 14, 1970, East Carolina and Marshall will forever be linked. All 75 people aboard a chartered Southern Airways DC-9 carrying Marshall players, coaches and fans were killed when the plane returning from a 17-14 loss to ECU slammed into a hillside surrounding Tri-State Airport in Kenova, West Virginia. It remains the deadliest sports-related air disaster in U.S. history.
“I was 6 when the plane crashed, just a couple miles from my home, and my cousins were first responders,” Marshall president Brad D. Smith said. “I remember the mountain glowing red and the sky kind of lighting up at night. And then, of course, hearing all the sirens and everything. It’s just incredible how personal the Marshall story is to everybody.”
On Saturday, the bond that endures between the schools evoked deeply rooted emotions and more than a few tears as 38,211 people gathered at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. After a weather delay of an hour and 41 minutes at halftime, Marshall scored 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter for a 31-13 win.
But the final score was almost an afterthought. More than 30 East Carolina players from the 1970 game returned to campus to pay tribute to their fallen opponents from more than a half century ago. (A similar ceremony had been planned for the fall of 2020, 50 years after the crash, but was canceled because of COVID-19.) Some of those players hadn’t been back in decades.
“I’m still not over it, not sure I ever will get over it,” said George Whitley, a senior co-captain and defensive back on the 1970 ECU team. “I think I’ve been back here for a game maybe one other time, but I wasn’t going to miss this one.”
On the Marshall side, it was the first time Red Dawson had been back since the 1970 game. Dawson, the Thundering Herd’s defensive coordinator, didn’t get on the team plane that night and instead drove to Ferrum College in Virginia for a recruiting visit along with freshman coach Gail Parker, who had flown down with the team but traded seats with assistant coach “Deke” Brackett, who had driven to Greenville with Dawson.
Just as the rain started to come down Saturday, the 80-year-old Dawson gingerly walked out onto the field during a timeout in the first quarter. The players from East Carolina’s 1970 team presented him with a game ball they had all signed. Dawson pointed at each of them, nodded and mouthed the words “Thank you.”
Dawson, who still lives in Huntington, West Virginia, was a central figure in the 2006 film “We Are Marshall.” He and his wife, Sharon, drove to Greenville for the game last weekend after visiting the South Carolina coast. Dawson was only 28 when the crash occurred, not a lot older than many of the players he coached. For more than 30 years, he said, he was unable to escape the horror of it all and essentially went into a shell.
“Hell, I didn’t want to see anybody or talk to anybody, let alone talk about that game or remember anything about it. I just couldn’t,” said Dawson, who is still recovering from a stroke suffered three years ago. “I think I went to 27 funerals. You can’t imagine that kind of pain, seeing all those families who lost the people they love the most.
“It was hard coming back here. I didn’t know if I ever could.”
Dawson, wearing his green and white Marshall pullover, played over and over in his mind what it was going to feel like walking out on that field again. Some of the anguish he had purposely locked away came creeping back.
But not all of it. He maintained his razor-sharp wit throughout the weekend. Told that he was a lot better-looking than the actor, Matthew Fox, who played him in the movie, Dawson smiled wryly and said, “Now I know you’re bulls—ting me.”
Just before kickoff Saturday, Dawson stood adjacent to the end zone with Sharon at his side and gazed 100 yards in the other direction toward the visiting locker room. Just outside the stadium on that side is a memorial plaque that was installed in 2006 to honor the 1970 Thundering Herd. The plaque reads in part: “Their flight to eternity forever changed the lives of those who dearly loved them. … They shall live on in the hearts of their families and friends forever.”
The Marshall administration invited Red and Sharon Dawson to fly to the game with the team last weekend.
“But he said no, not this game and not here,” Sharon said.
As it turned out, Marshall’s plane had trouble landing at the Greenville airport on Friday before the game because of storms in the area. The plane circled the airport and was diverted to Richmond, Virginia, to refuel before returning to Greenville.
Dawson did stay at the hotel with the team, and when he and Sharon retired to the room that evening, they flipped on the television, and “We Are Marshall” was playing.
“We watch it every year now,” Sharon said. “Red usually makes it to the part where the screen goes black [when the plane goes down] before he starts crying.”
With the long weather delay, most of Saturday’s crowd had left by the time the second half resumed. Red and Sharon held out as long as they could, and Marshall coach Charles Huff reminded his players what this game means to so many.
“We talked to the team before the game that the way you honor someone is by how you do something,” Huff said.
Saturday’s win was Marshall’s first in Greenville in eight tries.
KEITH MOREHOUSE, WHOSE father, Gene, was killed in the crash, was also presented with a game ball during the ceremony. Gene was the radio voice for the Thundering Herd and the team’s sports information director in 1970. His son has followed in his footsteps, as Keith is the longtime sports director at WSAZ-TV, the NBC affiliate in Huntington.
It was only the sixth ECU-Marshall game in Greenville since the crash in 1970, and Morehouse had attended a few of the previous matchups. On one of those trips, he was able to go up into the old visiting team broadcast booth.
“The booths have all been redone with the stadium expansion, but they took me to the one Dad would have been in while calling his last game,” Morehouse said. “The footprint of the stadium is the same as it was in 1970, so as you walk onto the field, thoughts wash over you.”
A few years ago, some of the ECU players on the 1970 team sent Morehouse the original film from the game, and his colleagues at the television station spliced the audio of his father’s radio call with the game film.
Morehouse won an Edward R. Murrow regional award for best news documentary in 2020 with his report “A Change of Seasons: Fifty Novembers Ago.” He interviewed some of the ECU players for the piece and was struck by how it had impacted them.
“I guess we’ve all mourned in different ways,” said Morehouse, whose wife, Debbie, lost both of her parents in the crash.
Her father, Ray Hagley, was the team doctor and only 34 at the time of his death. Her mother, Shirley, was flying with her husband for the first time, traveling without their six children. Many of the fans on the plane were among the most prominent leaders in the community. There were 18 children who became orphans after losing both parents on the doomed flight.
Morehouse, 62, still has a picture from that game that shows part of the stands.
“You can pick out some of the family members, and you can see my wife’s father in one of the pictures,” he said.
Dawson, who never returned to coaching after the 1972 preseason, has blocked out much of what happened 53 years ago. Some of those memories he doesn’t want to recall, and others he’s relieved that he can’t recall because of the effects of his stroke.
What he does remember from that game 53 years ago, similar to the ECU players, are the faces of the Marshall players as they made their way off the field. He remembers some of the fans mingling around the locker room. And, yes, he remembers being peeved over the loss.
“We should have won the damn game,” Dawson said grimacing. “That’s what everybody was thinking.”
But a football game was the last thing on Dawson’s mind hours later as he and Parker hopped back in the car after visiting a prospect. They were listening to the car radio when they heard the news.
“Shock, total shock,” Dawson said. “I don’t know where we were or even what time it was. I just know we stopped the car and sat there and stared at each other. Neither one of us could say a word. We just stared. I couldn’t tell you how long. It seemed like forever.”
Back in Greenville, ECU coach Mike McGee came barreling through the dormitory late that night yelling for everybody to gather in the student center for an impromptu meeting.
“A lot of us were downtown trying to find a beer like most college kids. We were celebrating. We didn’t win many games that season,” said Richard Peeler, an all-conference defensive tackle for the team. “When Coach McGee finally got us all together that night, we went to pieces.”
Rusty Scales remembers being summoned by a graduate assistant, and for him, the news hit especially hard. Scales, a fullback on that ECU team, played high school football in New Jersey against Marshall quarterback Teddy Shoebridge and running back Art Harris. Scales played at Passaic Valley High, Harris at Passaic High and Shoebridge at Lyndhurst High.
“I stood over there with Teddy talking for a few minutes, talking about coaches and people we knew in New Jersey, some of the high school teams,” Scales recalled. “We talked long enough that our coaches were calling us off the field to the locker rooms.
“And just like that, you hear he’s gone, all of them. You just couldn’t believe it.”
The ECU team held a memorial service early the next morning at the Wright Auditorium on campus. The Pirates’ season was over, but Marshall had one more game remaining against Ohio University that weekend.
McGee, who died in 2019, was in his only season at East Carolina as coach before moving on to Duke. He called Peeler into his office Monday morning after the crash to see what his thoughts were about ECU potentially filling in for Marshall in its final scheduled game as a way to honor the players and coaches who lost their lives.
“We were going to wear their uniforms and any revenue we made would have gone to Marshall, but the NCAA wouldn’t let us do it,” Peeler said. “We were just looking for ways to do anything we could to help.”
AS SATURDAY’S GAME approached, the players and coaches who played in that 1970 game were hardly the only ones who found their minds racing — and their hearts aching.
Shoebridge’s older brother, Tom Shoebridge, had to pause several times to gather himself when recalling his final telephone conversation with his brother. Tom, who spends most of his time now at the New Jersey shore, was unable to make the trip to Greenville, but he connected a few years ago with some of the ECU players.
“Give those guys a big hug. We don’t shake hands in Jersey. We hug,” said Shoebridge, who retired in 2019 after more than 40 years of coaching track and football at his high school alma mater, the same school his late brother Teddy starred at in both football and baseball.
On Sundays when Teddy was at Marshall, he would call home collect. Tom said he, younger brother Terry and their parents would pass the phone around to talk to him.
“It was that or writing letters. We couldn’t talk long, either, because those collect calls were expensive,” Tom said. “But I’ll always remember him asking me about one of our biggest wins in high school, wanting to know all about our game and how excited he was for me. It was never about him.”
His voice cracking, Tom added, “I didn’t know that would be the last time I would talk to him.”
Whenever Tom hears that Marshall is going to be playing East Carolina, he said it brings him back to the day of Nov. 14, 1970.
“It’s not a good place to be sometimes,” Tom said. “I think about many, many things. As a coach, I think about the kids on that plane. They’d just lost a tough game. As a brother, I think about Teddy and what he was thinking before he died.”
Senior defensive end Owen Porter is Marshall’s defensive leader and one of the top players in the Sun Belt Conference. Saturday’s game was his first trip to Greenville. His grandparents, Don and Joyce Hampton, lived less than a mile from the crash site in Kenova. From the time he was a little boy, he’d heard stories about that fateful night and how the community rallied to support each other.
“They lived in a little white brick house right there at the time,” Porter said. “When the plane hit the mountain, it shook the walls, knocked pictures off the walls, shook stuff in bookcases, and there was broken glass and stuff on the floor.
“Marshall is who I am. It’s part of me and my family … always.”
Julia Keller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, was born and raised in Huntington. Her father was a math professor at Marshall and kept statistics at the football and basketball games. Keller would tag along as a young girl.
“I thought I was the queen of the world getting to sit there on press row and in the press box, and oh my gosh, that I knew Gene Morehouse,” Keller remembered. “My father and I shared a love of sports, and I know that crash affected him so profoundly because he knew a lot of those players and had them in class, and he knew the townspeople who were killed too.”
Soon after taking a job with the Chicago Tribune, Keller talked her editors into letting her write a story about the crash in 1999. She spent more than a month working on it, and one of the things that sticks with her was a visit she had with Teddy Shoebridge’s mother, who was dying of pancreatic cancer.
“I was so moved and touched when I went there. She had not been out of her bed for months,” said Keller, who was 13 when the plane crashed. “She came out into the living room, and we sat around the table and talked about Ted. She essentially got herself up out of what was her death bed to talk about her beloved son.”
Shoebridge’s mother died a few weeks after Keller’s story was published. When Keller realized that Marshall was playing at East Carolina this season, she immediately thought of that rainy, foggy night as a frightened 13-year-old and the unspeakable grief that consumed her hometown.
“It does change, the grief,” Keller said. “It goes from a very, very sharp edge, but I wouldn’t say it ever lessens.”
Earl Taylor was a member of the drumline in the ECU marching band in 1970. His wife, Pam, who joined the flag corps the following year, was also at the game in the stands. Taylor went on to earn three degrees at ECU, and to this day, he struggles to wrap his brain around the fact that he watched those players exit the field, but they never made it home.
“I think everybody on our campus was thinking the same thing, ‘We just played that team, and now they’re gone,'” Taylor said. “We won the game, but they lost their lives.
“It just couldn’t be.”
When the last of the Marshall players came straggling out of the locker room toward the team buses Saturday, the rain had just about stopped. Caleb McMillan, a junior receiver from Orlando, Florida, walked outside the gate with his headphones sitting atop his head. He turned to his left and was facing the plaque memorializing his Herd football brethren from more than 50 years ago. He took a picture with his cell phone and gently placed his hand on the plaque.
“We won’t forget,” he said softly.
It was McMillan’s 75-yard touchdown reception — another tribute of sorts to the “75” — that turned the game in Marshall’s favor.
But on this rainy night, it was little more than a footnote.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The landmark federal antitrust trial against NASCAR opened Monday with three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin breaking down in tears minutes into his testimony as the first witness in a case that could upend the venerable stock car series.
Hamlin’s 23XI Racing, which he co-owns with Michael Jordan, and Front Row Motorsports claim the series is a monopolistic bully that leaves its teams no option but to comply with rules and financing they don’t agree with.
As Jordan watched from the gallery, Hamlin began to cry and had to stop and compose himself when asked how he got into racing. He disclosed to The Associated Press last month that his father is dying, and he said on the stand he was emotional because his dad “is not in great health.”
“We got to when I was about 20 and a decision had to be made, I could keep racing or go out and work for my dad’s trailer business,” Hamlin testified, adding that he later was thinking about what retirement looked like and found a team going out of business. He needed a partner and turned to Jordan, who he had developed a friendship with when the Basketball Hall of Famer owned the Charlotte Hornets and Hamlin was a season-ticket holder.
“If I can’t be successful with Michael as a partner, I knew this was never going to work,” he said.
The references to his early days in auto racing and the sacrifices his family made were intended to show how difficult it is for both team owners and drivers to make it at the top level of the sport. He said he never would have been able to start 23XI in 2021 had he not partnered with Jordan.
Because of Jordan’s presence with the team, Hamlin testified, 23XI has turned a profit in all but one of its five seasons of operation. His attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, said in his opening statement that fast-food restaurant entrepreneur Bob Jenkins has never turned a profit since starting his Front Row team in 2004, a team that won the Daytona 500 in 2021.
Kessler said a NASCAR-commissioned study found that 75% of teams lost money in 2024 and added that over a three-year period almost $400 million was paid to the France Family Trust. He said a 2023 evaluation by Goldman Sachs found NASCAR to be worth $5 billion. NASCAR is currently run by Jim France, son of founder Bill France Sr.
“What the evidence is going to show is Mr. France ran this for the benefit of his family at the expense of the teams and sport,” Kessler said.
At the heart of the lawsuit is NASCAR’s revenue sharing model, which 23XI and Front Row argue is unfair to race teams that often operate at a loss. Hamlin testified it cost $20 million to simply bring a single car to the track over a 38-race season, not including overhead expenses such as driver salary and business operations.
“So, why would these people do this if you are just going to lose money because NASCAR isn’t giving you a fair deal?” asked Kessler, “Because you love stock car racing, and there’s nowhere else to do it.”
The charter agreements signed for this year that triggered the lawsuit guarantee the teams $12.5 million in annual revenue per chartered car. NASCAR argues the guaranteed payouts are an increase from $9 million from the previous agreement, but Hamlin noted that 11 of the first 19 chartered teams are no longer in business.
All three charters 23XI purchased came from teams that ceased operations, and Hamlin said 23XI paid $4.7 million for its first charter, $13.5 million for its second and $28 million for its third, acquired late last year. He acknowledged purchasing the third charter was a risk because of the pending litigation – and the price concerned him – but it was required if 23XI intends to build itself into a top team.
The charter system guarantees a car a spot in the field each race week as well as a percentage of the purse and gives team owners an asset to sell should they want to get out of the business.
NASCAR attorneys argued that the charter system has created $1.5 billion in equity for the 36 chartered teams. Prior to the charter system, teams raced “open,” with no guarantee they’d make the field or earn a payout.
“The France family built NASCAR from nothing. They are an American success story,” Johnny Stephenson said in the opening statement for NASCAR. Stephenson is a colleague of Christopher Yates, who had previously handled most of the courtroom arguments for the defendants.
“They’ve done it through hard work over 75 years. That’s the kind of effort that doesn’t deserve a lawsuit. That’s the kind of effort that deserves admiration.”
The case has churned through hearings and arguments for more than a year despite calls from other NASCAR teams to settle. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell even helped mediate a failed two-day summit in October.
A NASCAR victory could put 23XI, Front Row and their six combined cars out of business. Their charters – now being held by NASCAR – would likely be sold. The last charter went for $45 million, and NASCAR has indicated there is interest from potential buyers including private equity firms.
A win for the teams could lead to monetary damages and the potential demolition of NASCAR as it is run today. The judge has the power to unravel a monopoly, and nothing is off the table, from ordering a sale of NASCAR to the dismantling of the charter system.
Jordan’s presence factors into the trial
Jordan’s presence in the courtroom gallery near Hamlin was a factor: Among those dismissed from serving on the jury was a man who said he can’t be impartial because “I like Mike” and another who said he had Michael Jordan posters on his walls growing up. A juror said they were a North Carolina fan but noted the football team at Jordan’s alma mater is not “doing too well right now” to which the star shook his head and laughed.
NASCAR executives in the courtroom included chairman Jim France and vice chair Lesa France Kennedy, two scions of the family that founded NASCAR in 1948 and still owns it.
Hamlin will resume testimony Tuesday morning. NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps, 23XI minority owner Curtis Polk, France Kennedy and other top executives had to leave the courtroom after opening arguments because they are all potential witnesses.
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Greg Wyshynski
NEW YORK — After 11 seasons as one of the NHL’s leading scorers, Mikko Rantanen has become accustomed to fame.
But infamy? Not so much, although he has experienced plenty of that this season.
Rantanen recently served the first suspension of his NHL career, having earned an automatic one-game ban for two game misconducts for physical infractions.
NHL rules state that players must go 41 games between ejections to avoid suspension. Rantanen’s second ejection, for boarding Calgary Flames forward Matt Coronato, came four days after his first ejection on a play that earned Rantanen widespread derision from fans — and one very angry coach.
On Nov. 18, Rantanen skated through a check by New York Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield and shoved defenseman Alexander Romanov in the back, sending him violently into the end boards. As a result of that play, Romanov had shoulder surgery that will put him on the shelf for five months at a minimum.
Rantanen didn’t have a hearing with the NHL Department of Player Safety for either of these misconducts, but he heard plenty from Islanders coach Patrick Roy after the Romanov hit. It was a scene that instantly went viral: Rantanen leaving the ice after his major penalty and a red-faced Roy screaming at him from the New York bench.
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Mikko Rantanen ejected for nasty hit on Alex Romanov
Alex Romanov is left flat out on the ice after this shove in the back from Mikko Rantanen with under a minute left in regulation.
“Usually if something happens, if somebody gets pissed off, the media picks it up,” Rantanen told ESPN on Tuesday. “So I’m not really surprised it got so big.”
Roy, who called the hit “disrespectful,” yelled at Rantanen, appearing to say, “You’re not going to f—ing finish that game” in reference to the teams’ rematch scheduled for March 26 on Long Island.
Is Rantanen worried about what might happen in that game?
“No, no, no,” he said. “I’m just going to play there, play hard, play hockey and see what comes at me. But I’m a grown man. So I can stand up for myself.”
But the notoriety wasn’t only on the ice for Rantanen in 2025. Earlier this year, thanks to two blockbuster trades, he became one of the NHL’s most debated players.
RANTANEN WAS PLAYING for the Colorado Avalanche in a contract year. His salary demands remained high — rumored at the time to be around $14 million annually for one of the league’s most dominant scoring wingers and a player who helped Colorado win the Stanley Cup in 2022.
Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland shocked the hockey world by trading him to the Carolina Hurricanes in a blockbuster deal on Jan. 24 that saw Canes leading scorer Martin Necas sent back to the Avalanche. MacFarland called it a “business decision” involving a player who “had the unrestricted free agent card” but lamented losing “a superstar human being.”
However, Rantanen’s time with the Hurricanes was incredibly short. Carolina hoped to convince him to sign an extension — meeting his salary demands — and to put roots down in Raleigh. But after 13 games, the player the Hurricanes hoped could lead them to the Stanley Cup was traded again, this time to Dallas, in a deal involving young forward Logan Stankoven.
“My sense of it was that this just didn’t feel like home for him, as far as I can tell. And that’s OK. He’s making an eight-year commitment,” Carolina GM Eric Tulsky said at the time.
It was a dizzying, at times humbling, experience for Rantanen. He wanted to remain in Colorado. He learned quickly how much was out of his control. It was no surprise that Rantanen’s contract with Dallas spanned eight seasons (for $96 million total) and carried a full no-movement clause.
“You learn always from those tough moments, whether it’s on the ice or wherever in life,” he said. “You always learn from those moments when you’re going through tough times.”
The double-trade season and the new monster contract sparked questions around the NHL about whether Rantanen was in fact worth coveting. Was he a superstar away from the Avalanche? Was he a franchise-level player?
“There’s been a lot written about him. There’s been a lot said about him,” then-Stars coach Peter DeBoer said last postseason. “There’s been a lot of doubters out there, based on the situations he’s been in and how it’s looked at different points.”
Rantanen began answering those questions in the Stanley Cup playoffs, leading the Stars back to the conference finals for the third straight season — including a seven-game, first-round elimination of his friends from Colorado. Rantanen had 22 points in 18 playoff games, including one torrid stretch in which he had nine goals and eight assists in the span of six games.
DALLAS IS HOME NOW. Rantanen and his girlfriend, Susanna Ranta, got engaged in the offseason. No contract talk leaks. No trade chaos. To his relief, just playing the game.
“We’re settled and know where we’re going to be,” he said. “You don’t have to think about off-ice stuff as much. You can just focus on hockey. It’s been more comfortable.”
Rantanen’s comfort has been to Dallas’ benefit. Through 25 games, he has 33 points, including 10 goals. That includes 18 points on the Stars’ torrid power play, which ranked second to Pittsburgh heading into Tuesday’s game against the New York Rangers.
Winger Jason Robertson said having Rantanen for a full training camp was a key to that unit’s success. “You really didn’t have time to develop that look, that chemistry after the trade deadline last year,” he said.
At 5-on-5, Rantanen has found a fit with center Wyatt Johnston, who was tied with Robertson at 16 goals to lead the Stars. Like Nathan MacKinnon, the Avalanche star with whom Rantanen had explosive chemistry, Johnston is a right-shot center.
“Obviously last year I had a lot of success with playing with [Roope] Hintz and [Mikael] Granlund. Those are two lefties, so it’s not end of the world,” Rantanen said. “But playing a lot with Nate in the past as a righty, it’s more common for me to make plays and stuff. [Johnston] is a really good player. He can score goals. We find each other pretty well. Obviously, it takes some time. We haven’t played that long together, so we can still get better, but it’s going in a good direction.”
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Mikko Rantanen capitalizes on the power play
Mikko Rantanen scores on the power play for Dallas Stars
Rantanen has played with Johnston and Dallas captain Jamie Benn recently, which is to say the Finland native is not playing with his countryman Hintz. When he was traded to the Stars last season, Rantanen joined what was colloquially known as Dallas’ “Finnish Mafia,” along with Hintz, defensemen Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell, and Granlund, who left for Anaheim as a free agent last summer. He played on a line with Hintz and Granlund for much of the playoffs.
There are moments when the Finns flock together. Such as at the end of a recent morning skate, when they were speaking their native tongue during a Suomi-only shooting drill. But Dallas players say Rantanen also has subverted some expectations.
“Normally, most of our Finnish guys are relatively quiet and whatever. Mikko comes in here and he’s this big, loud and happy guy. Just a different dynamic,” Robertson said. “He fit in obviously very well, and everyone welcomed him in.”
Forward Tyler Seguin knew Rantanen only as an opponent before the trade. A rather large opponent, at 6-foot-4 and around 230 pounds. Seguin said having Rantanen as a teammate offered an up-close glimpse at “how thick he is and why his nickname is what it is” referring to “Moose,” Rantanen’s moniker in Colorado.
“He’s a big boy,” Seguin said.
But Seguin also appreciates what a charismatic teammate he is, too.
“I used to know him as a skilled big forward that put up a lot of offense and points with Colorado. Getting him here as a teammate, I’ve learned what a good person he is. How much he can affect our locker room with his leadership,” Seguin explained. “Sometimes, guys come in and won’t feel comfortable talking. He does. So it’s nice.”
RANTANEN BRINGS SIZE, skill and personality to Dallas. He also brings a superstar quality to the franchise as “one of the elite power forwards in the game,” as GM Jim Nill described him last March.
Dallas coach Glen Gulutzan, hired to replace DeBoer in the offseason, coached two other elite forwards on the Edmonton Oilers‘ bench as an assistant coach: Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Gulutzan said that Rantanen is “certainly there” as far as comparable star quality.
“The most interesting thing that I’ve found coaching Mikko and then coaching Leon and Connor: The similarity is their fire. Their competitiveness. And that’s what you need, right?” Gulutzan said. “They’re very hard on themselves, just to be great every night. That’s what I really noticed. I didn’t know that as much with Mikko, but now that I’ve gotten to coach him, you just see that drive and that intensity.”
Rantanen is trying to drive the Stars into the Stanley Cup Final after three straight conference finals losses, and push Dallas to its first Cup win since 1999. He has found the right fit with a team committed to him for the long term. But he learned a lesson the hard way during last season’s chaos: Take nothing for granted.
“Last year was nothing like I’ve experienced before. Hopefully it never happens again,” he said. “But if it does, I’m ready.”
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