Byron headlines NASCAR’s underappreciated next wave of stars
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — It is time that we start doing a better job of appreciating William Byron. Actually, it is past time for us to get on board the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevy and the affable 26-year-old North Carolinian who wheels it.
He is a freshly minted Daytona 500 champion. His second victory of 2024, on the Circuit of the Americas road course two weeks ago, was the 12th win of his career, marking the third straight season he has won at least two races and his fifth straight campaign with at least one trophy, including last year’s series-best six. He has made NASCAR‘s postseason playoff field in six consecutive seasons, his only miss coming in 2018 when he won the consolation prize of Rookie of the Year, and last fall he made the Championship 4. Oh, and he also won the Xfinity Series title in 2017 … and the year before that set a record for rookie wins in the Truck Series with seven.
That all feels worthy of our collective praise, certainly more praise than it feels like he is currently receiving or has ever received.
But why is recognition of his feats such a rarity?
There are those — like, a lot of those — who will tell you that William Byron is not Jeff Gordon, the original captain of that car and a four-time Cup Series champion. They are also quick to remind us that he’s no Jimmie Johnson, the seven-time champion who was essentially discovered and hired by Gordon. They’ll also say he’s not Chase Elliott, or Kyle Larson, both Cup titlists and both his HMS teammates.
You know who else would tell you all of that? William Byron.
“I know that I am not Jeff Gordon, but when I get that car with his number on the side, I want to do everything I can to do right by Jeff and by the history that number represents,” Byron explained last month, adding that if he ever needed a reminder of all that, it usually comes in the form of a prerace, getting-into-the-car visit from Gordon himself, now the chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. “He likes to joke that there’s no pressure and that it’s not his car anymore … but I also don’t think he’s really joking. There’s still a part of me that can’t believe that conversation is even happening. I mean, it’s Jeff Gordon! I grew up watching him race.”
The first time Byron saw Gordon race in person, it was nearly 20 years ago, at the very racetrack where he will drive Gordon’s old ride this weekend: NASCAR’s oldest racetrack, Martinsville Speedway. It was 2006, and 9-year-old William, who had become obsessed with NASCAR as a toddler, convinced parents Bill (yes, William is a junior, but don’t call him that) and Dana to stay for the entire 500 laps. They watched Gordon and Johnson battle at the front, as they seemingly always did on the half-mile oval, and witnessed Johnson take a huge step toward clinching the first of those seven titles by season’s end.
Not long after, Byron, who grew up in South Charlotte not far from the homes of Johnson and Gordon, rang the doorbell of Johnson’s house on Halloween. He screeched out a “Trick or treat!” and held out his bag for candy.
“Then,” Johnson remembers, laughing, “He told me that one day he was going to be my teammate at Hendrick Motorsports. And he was. For three years. And honestly, it wasn’t very long after he told me that. What, maybe 10 years, tops?”
“Jimmie was my guy, my hero,” Byron recalls, as he has over and over again since February, when Johnson was among the first drivers to visit Daytona 500 Victory Lane to congratulate the kid with the Halloween bag on winning NASCAR’s biggest race. “Literally every Sunday I had his die-cast cars in my room and just dreamed about what it would be like to be in his shoes.”
Byron has not filled those shoes yet, but he’s way ahead of schedule. This, after a career that got started behind the normal driver development schedule, with shoes that were pressing digital pedals in his bedroom instead of those in the floorboard of a stock car.
The man who wears the most current model of Daytona 500 champion’s ring was — and is — a gamer. He was in the late stages of elementary school and the beginnings of middle school when he signed up for iRacing and started assembling a home simulator rig piece by piece. By that age, Gordon, Larson, Elliott and every other racer you’ve heard of (and countless more you will never hear of) had already started logging thousands of laps in competitive karting and quarter midget racing. Even Johnson, whose path was considered atypical, was racing motorcycles by the age of 4.
But Byron was turning laps and winning races while sitting perfectly still, with more than 100 victories over two seasons at the same time he was becoming a teenager, preparing to become a high school student (where he was known as Billy, but don’t call him that, either) and also working toward earning Eagle Scout honors with his local Boy Scout troop.
“We worked hard to make sure that even though he was clearly wanting to become a race car driver, that he still had some sort of balance as just a boy, experiencing a lot of life, not just racing,” Dana Byron said, beaming from the corner of the Daytona International Speedway media center as she watched her son sit down for his post-Daytona 500 news conference in February. “But he knew what he wanted to do, and there was no stopping that. I have joked that all these parents who get mad at their children for playing video games, worried that it’s a waste of time. Well …”
She pointed at the dais, where William was hugging it out with Gordon and explaining how he had somehow held off a field of wrecking race cars to win the Great American Race.
“Sorry, parents, we might have given your child the excuse they needed to keep playing those games.”
There is an entire corner of Hollywood dedicated to this very subject. The dreamer who pretends to be doing the real thing and somehow ends up doing it for real. It’s Mark Wahlberg as Izzy Cole in “Rock Star.” It’s Doug Masters in “Iron Eagle.” It’s the starry-eyed stage-side singers in Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero” and the country crooner in Travis Tritt’s “I’m Gonna Be Somebody.” Last summer, it was “Gran Turismo,” based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough, who went from sim racer to real-life sports car racer, running events across an alphabet soup of series for a total of seven seasons, including three starts in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
With all due respect to Mardenborough, though, or even Izzy Cole of Steel Dragon, none of their fantasy-to-reality accomplishments are even on the same lap with what Byron has accomplished in his still-young through-the-looking glass career.
When he did finally slide into the seat of a stock car, it was in the Legends series, the decades-old boxy roadsters that have been the launching pad of a huge percentage of today’s NASCAR Cup Series starting grid, from Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney to the Busch brothers and Elliott.
“I had no question about his love for racing,” admits his father, Bill, who owns a financial services firm and dabbled in late-model racing years ago. “But it’s an investment of money and time, so I really put it on him to prove why we should do this. He came back with a presentation. A five-page paper. That’s really all you need to know about his work ethic.”
Unlike those Cup champs, when Byron first wheeled one of the 1,300-pound, 130-horsepower Legends machines, he was not good. The perception among his peers was that he was just another rich kid who was in over his head. This was the Eagle Scout/five-page paper kid, though. Every conversation he had with Legends vets, drivers and mechanics was spent furiously scribbling observations into a notebook that he carried with him at all times.
Byron made his first Legends start in late 2012. The next winter he went to an event in Florida, running seven races and wrecking out of five of them.
“The difference between sitting in a sim car and a real car, the visuals are the same, the way the car reacts to mechanical changes, that’s very similar, and it’s obvious that real-life forces and even smells and noise, that’s all different in real life,” Byron illustrates, adding that this applies not only to being in one’s at-home rig but also to Chevrolet’s multimillion-dollar simulator in which he and every other NASCAR driver spend countless hours now. “But the biggest difference is consequence.”
In other words, real walls hurt. Real cars are ruined. There is no reset button.
“Once you learn that, then everything about it is being smart, about picking your spots, knowing when to do things instead of just doing them and seeing what happens,” Byron continues. “You think about all the possibilities before you make a decision, the best that you can in the amount of time you have, which usually isn’t much. But that’s where simulation helps now. Try it in there first, where there is a reset button.”
Thus far, he hasn’t needed a lot of reset buttons in the real world. By any measure, his rise has been stunning.
In his first full year of Legends, he won 33 times. The talk of the spoiled kid out over his skis vanished, thanks to the wining and also as people witnessed his work ethic firsthand. Ignoring talk about Byron’s late start at the ripe old age of 15, he was signed by Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s late-model program, then graduated to race ARCA, K&N and eventually trucks for Kyle Busch. He won that 2017 Xfinity title in dramatic fashion over JR Motorsports teammate Elliott Sadler and was in the No. 24 car the next year. Then came the dozen wins and counting, already more career victories than Blaney, Clint Bowyer, Sterling Marlin and NASCAR Hall of Famers Cotton Owens and just-elected Donnie Allison. He is only a few wins from moving onto the same career wins rung as Ernie Irvan, Curtis Turner, Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, Harry Gant, Geoff Bodine, Neil Bonnett and, yes, Chase Elliott.
Did we mention he’s doing it while also attending college full time?
“It’s online, so I keep a pretty low profile, but there are times when we are working on a group project and I have to introduce myself,” he says of his continuing education at Liberty University, also one of his sponsors … although he still does have to pay tuition. “But when the question comes up, ‘Well, William, what do you do?’ answering that can be a bit awkward.”
But why? And how do they not already know who he is? It is a confounding anonymity.
It isn’t an issue exclusive to Byron, either. Many of his NASCAR generation continue to express irritation that they are overshadowed by bigger brand-name drivers despite the fact that their numbers are just as impressive — if not more so. See: Christopher Bell, who has made the final four the past two seasons, but still bristles over the fact that he didn’t receive as much as a phone call from the producers of the new Netflix reality show until a bit of a Hail Mary call at the very end of last season.
And, as the world learned via that same series, Byron is not exactly a hair-on-fire party animal. Most viewers’ takeaway was that he loves Legos. However, what could possibly be more relatable than someone who has made their dreams come true, from racing video games to the Harley J. Earl Trophy, while also grinding it out in the Boy Scouts and college? And he certainly is not the first Hendrick driver to be framed up as vanilla, a list that is topped (albeit inaccurately) by his hero, Johnson.
If Byron is being honest — and he has been much more publicly open about this since his Daytona win — the lack of recognition can be frustrating. Right there in that post-500 news conference, it was Byron who described himself as Hendrick Motorsports’ forgotten star, behind Larson, Elliott and all of the HMS legends who came before him.
“I’m always the ‘other guy,’ right?” he says with an eye on the team’s de facto 40th anniversary event this weekend at Martinsville, the place and race where Bodine earned the first of the team’s record 304 Cup Series wins. “That has been hard on me. I have probably let it bother me too much, but it has also been a big motivator for me. I came into this year with a chip on my shoulder because of it. I am a quiet guy. I got a relatively late jump on driving. I don’t come from a long line of racers. But OK, underestimate me. See how that works out.”
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Kristen Shilton
Boos rained down at the final horn in Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday night as the Maple Leafs moved closer to extending their 57-year Stanley Cup drought with a 6-1 blowout loss to the Panthers.
Fans even threw their jerseys on the ice as Toronto saw its 2-0 series lead turn into a 3-2 deficit. But coach Craig Berube wants his players to get out of their heads for now.
“That last game was overthinking and not playing hockey,” he said. “Right now, [players] need to stick together tonight as a team and take a breath. Stop thinking about the game. Relax. We’ll get thinking about the game when it matters.”
To get back to Toronto for a Game 7, the Leafs will have to win in Florida, but they likely won’t have starting goaltender Anthony Stolarz. He has been sidelined since Game 1 of the series with an undisclosed injury. He resumed skating over the weekend and was on the ice for a 30-minute workout on Thursday, but Berube doubted Stolarz would join the Leafs in Florida for Game 6.
That leaves his replacement Joseph Woll, who gave up five goals on 25 shots Wednesday.
Players met after the game to break down what went wrong, and Berube had a team meeting planned for Thursday after the Leafs landed back in Fort Lauderdale.
“A loss is a loss,” Berube said. “If we [had] lost 2-1 [on Wednesday] and it was a close game, would it really matter today? We got beat. I’ve been in this situation before. We’re all going to be down and dejected, but we can’t be. We have to regroup.”
That includes the Leafs’ top skaters. Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander have failed to score against Florida.
In Game 5, the Panthers repeatedly stymied Toronto’s rush attempts and pounded them with a smothering forecheck that left the Leafs reeling offensively.
Meanwhile, Florida peppered Woll until defenseman Aaron Ekblad broke through with the game’s first goal late in the first period. Toronto’s own mistakes — including a Dmitry Kulikov shot beating Woll off the stick of Leafs’ forward Scott Laughton and a baffling turnover by Marner in his own zone to set up a Jesper Boqvist strike — led to a three-goal second period. After AJ Greer made it 5-1 Florida with his first-ever playoff goal, Woll was gone in favor of Matt Murray.
“[It was] very disappointing,” said Morgan Rielly. “But at the end of the day, whether we lost the way we lost last night or we lost in overtime, whatever it is, we’re still in a position where we’re ready to fight. We have to go down there [to Florida] and play our best game. We can’t dwell on all sorts of [other] things.”
The Leafs were in control of the series against Florida early on, collecting wins in Games 1 and 2 and mounting multi-goal leads in Game 3. It was late in that outing though when Florida flipped the switch — and they haven’t looked back. The Panthers rallied in the second period of Game 3 to score three goals and take their first lead of the night. Rielly’s goal at the midway point of the third period tied the game and forced overtime, but Brad Marchand scored the game-winner for Florida.
That Rielly marker would stand as Toronto’s last goal on Sergei Bobrovsky for nearly six periods of hockey. Toronto was shutout 2-0 by the Panthers in Game 4 and were dangerously close to being blanked again if not for Nick Robertson’s marker late in Game 5.
Bobrovsky struggled to open the series against the Leafs, allowing nine goals in the first two games for an .820 SV%, but he has slammed the door since late in that Game 3 win. He has turned aside 54 of 55 shots through Games 4 and 5 for a .982 SV%.
Robertson’s goal did little for the fans.
“It’s tough,” said Rielly. “But [fans] have the right to do what they want to do. We need to improve and play better. We expect to have a team that’s going to go out and win and compete. When that doesn’t happen, everyone is upset.”
Rielly is the longest-tenured member of the Leafs and has experienced the many highs and lows Toronto has endured trying to exorcise past playoff demons. Brandon Carlo — acquired at the March trade deadline — is newer to Toronto’s history but shared Rielly’s view that, despite the emphatic fan response to their poor performance, it’s not something that should linger.
“In a game like that, you don’t want to overthink those things too much,” said Carlo of the extracurriculars. “It is a passionate fanbase … there’s going to be ups and downs for sure, but from the standpoint of playoff series in the past, I’ve been in these situations myself. Had bad games in the playoffs; it’s not just subject to this group by any means. I think that needs to be taken into account, too.”
The second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs has reached the point where elimination games will be played every night. Thursday night, it’s an elimination doubleheader.
First up are the Washington Capitals, down 3-1 and hosting the Carolina Hurricanes (7 p.m. ET, TNT). In the nightcap, the Winnipeg Jets are in a similar scenario, down 3-1 at home hosting the Dallas Stars (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT).
Will either team force a Game 6?
Read on for game previews with statistical insights from ESPN Research, a recap of what went down in Wednesday’s games and the three stars of Wednesday from Arda Öcal.
Matchup notes
Carolina Hurricanes at Washington Capitals
Game 5 | 7 p.m. ET | TNT
Leading 3-1 heading into this game, the Hurricanes are -4000 to win the series, per ESPN BET, while the Caps are +1300. The Canes have the third-shortest odds to win the Cup (+325), while the Caps have the longest (+7500).
The Canes are 8-0 in best-of-seven series in which they held a 3-1 lead; in Stanley Cup playoff history at large, teams that hold a 3-1 lead have gone on to win 91% of the time.
Carolina’s Frederik Andersen had a 21-save shutout in Game 3, then didn’t allow a goal until the third period of Game 4. His shutout streak ended at 123:24, which was fifth longest in Whalers/Hurricanes franchise history.
Seth Jarvis‘ goal to make it 2-0 Hurricanes in Game 4 was the 16th of his postseason career, the most in franchise history for a player before his 24th birthday.
Alex Ovechkin has been somewhat quiet this round for Washington, but his power-play goal in Game 4 earned him higher positioning on two all-time lists. He now has 77 career postseason goals, putting him 12th all time (breaking a tie with Mario Lemieux), and his 31 career power-play goals are now alone in fifth place all-time (breaking a tie with Nicklas Lidstrom and Joe Pavelski).
Dallas Stars at Winnipeg Jets
Game 5 | 9:30 p.m. ET | TNT
Following their Game 4 win, the Stars’ odds to win the series shifted to -1200, while the Jets’ are now +600. Dallas’ Cup-winning odds shifted to +275, while Winnipeg’s are now +4000.
In franchise history, the Stars have gone 13-1 in best-of-seven series when leading 3-1. Their lone series loss came as the Minnesota North Stars against the Detroit Red Wings in 1992.
Mikael Granlund‘s hat trick in the Stars’ Game 4 win included two power-play goals. That made him the second player in North Stars/Stars history with two power-play goals as part of a hat trick — Dino Ciccarelli accomplished the feat in 1982.
Dallas’ Mikko Rantanen continues to dominate the postseason. He’s atop the leaderboard for points (19) and goals (nine), and has the shortest odds to win the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP (+375).
With the Stars’ Game 4 win, Jake Oettinger became the third goaltender in North Stars/Stars franchise history to win five straight home games to begin a postseason, joining Ed Belfour (six straight in 2000, five in 1999) and Cesare Maniago (five in 1968).
The Jets will be glad to play at home again. They have gone 0-5 on the road this postseason, and have been outscored 25-8.
Kyle Connor enters Game 5 one goal behind Paul Stastny (2018) for second on the single-postseason franchise goal-scoring leaderboard, with five. Mark Scheifele (14, in 2018) appears safe at No. 1 unless the Jets can rally to make the conference finals.
Öcal’s three stars from Wednesday
1. Panthers defensemen
In addition to keeping the Maple Leafs at bay until it was too late it didn’t really matter, three Cats defensemen scored goals in Game 5, tying franchise record for most in a single playoff game.
Kapanen scored the series-clinching goal in OT against the Golden Knights — and was +4000 to do it, per ESPN BET. Fans of junior hockey will remember he also scored the golden goal in the 2016 IIHF world junior championship against Russia.
3. Florida scores by committee
An amazing 14 Panthers had one or more points in this game, which is the most in a single game in franchise history — 12 Panthers had a point in Game 3 of this series.
Wednesday’s recaps
Florida Panthers 6, Toronto Maple Leafs 1
FLA leads 3-2 | Game 6 Friday
While this series had previously been close, Game 5 was a one-sided affair. The Panthers were successfully keeping the Leafs from generating much offense, while also knocking on the offensive door themselves repeatedly. Aaron Ekblad finally broke the seal at 14:38 of the first after sustained pressure in the Toronto zone, and it was off to the races after that. Dmitry Kulikov, Jesper Boqvist and Niko Mikkola added goals in the second period, with A.J. Greer and Sam Bennett joining the party in the third. It was the first goal of the postseason for Kulikov, Boqvist, Mikkola and Greer. Nicholas Robertson would add a tally for the Leafs with just over a minute remaining, but that was far too little, far too late. The Panthers can put an end to this series at home in Game 6. Full recap.
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Sam Bennett slots home a 6th goal for Panthers
Sam Bennett stuns the Toronto crowd with the Panthers’ sixth goal vs. the Maple Leafs.
Edmonton Oilers 1, Vegas Golden Knights 0 (OT
EDM wins 4-1, faces DAL or WPG next
Throughout this series, the Oilers’ depth has shown up to help the scoring burden on the top stars; the same cannot be said for the Golden Knights’ depth — and Vegas’ stars didn’t have the greatest series either. For the second straight game, no Vegas player could solve Stuart Skinner in the Edmonton cage, which meant that the Oilers needed just one goal to take the W. It took 67:19 of playing time to find that goal, but Kasperi Kapanen scored the opportunistic game- and series-winning tally. It was the second career overtime game-winning goal for Kapanen (his first was in 2017, with the Maple Leafs). The Oilers are on to the Western Conference finals for the second straight year, and will take on the winner of the Dallas Stars–Winnipeg Jets series. Full recap.
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Oilers call series after Kasperi Kapanen scores OT winner
Kasperi Kapanen somehow gets his stick on the puck last on a scramble in overtime as the Oilers clinch the series vs. the Golden Knights.
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Greg Wyshynski
DALLAS — Before he became the most dominant player in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, Mikko Rantanen wasn’t exactly himself.
“I think this year has been such a whirlwind for him that it took him some time to get comfortable with us,” Dallas defenseman Brendan Smith said.
In his four previous NHL seasons with the Colorado Avalanche, Rantanen was fifth among all players in goals (163) and seventh in points per game (1.27). He was well on his way to hitting his marks again this season, with 25 goals and a 1.31 points-per-game average with the Avalanche.
But then, 49 games into his season, his world crumbled.
Rantanen was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes on Jan. 24 as part of a three-team trade. After 13 unremarkable games — and his stated intention not to sign an extension with Carolina before unrestricted free agency — Rantanen was traded a second time to the Dallas Stars before the March 7 NHL trade deadline, signing an eight-year extension with the team to finally stop the carousel from spinning.
He was under his career averages in 20 regular-season games with Dallas (five goals, 0.90 points per game). His postseason started quietly, with one assist through four games against his old teammates from Colorado in the first round.
The questions swirled around him from fans and media: Was this performance worth $96 million through 2032-33 with a full no-movement clause? Could Rantanen put up elite numbers without Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, who fueled them in Colorado? Would he live up to his reputation as a playoff hero, having been fourth in postseason points (62 in 48 games) since 2020?
Who was Mikko Rantanen?
“When you think about his journey this year, he’s been through a lot,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “There’s been a lot written about him. There’s been a lot said about him. 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.”
His teammates watched Rantanen struggle to find his groove.
“It’s an interesting profession where you can be great, but then you get put in a different situation, and all of a sudden you’re trying to figure out comradery, where you fit, all these little things,” Smith said. “I’m not sure if it really fit with Carolina. And then with us, he was still trying to work and find out where he fit.”
And now?
“Now, he looks comfortable,” Smith said, with a laugh.
Since Game 5 against the Avalanche, Rantanen has 18 points in seven games — five of them Dallas victories, as they’ve pushed the Winnipeg Jets to the brink of elimination with a 3-1 lead in their second-round series, seeking a third straight trip to the Western Conference finals.
“I’m trying to stay in the moment. I’m happy to help the team and try to keep doing that as much as I can, both ends of the ice,” Rantanen said. “But even keel after wins and good games.”
Rantanen led all scorers in the postseason with 19 points in 11 games after Tuesday night. He’s the first player in NHL history with five three-point games through a team’s first 10 playoff games in a single postseason. He set another NHL record by either scoring or assisting on 13 consecutive goals by his team. At one point, Rantanen had factored into 15 of 16 goals for Dallas.
“He’s just getting started. He’s just warming up here,” DeBoer said after the Stars’ Game 3 win against Winnipeg. “I think he’s on a mission.”
THE 2015 NHL DRAFT class was absurdly loaded.
The Avalanche watched players like Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, Noah Hanifin, Zach Werenski and Timo Meier come off the board before landing Rantanen, an 18-year-old winger playing against men in Finland’s SM-liiga.
Over the next 10 seasons, Rantanen would become the second-highest goal scorer from that draft class (294) behind McDavid (361), the three-time MVP and five-time scoring champion. His chemistry with MacKinnon helped both of them achieve offensive dominance. In his back-to-back 100-point seasons with the Avalanche in 2022-23 and 2023-24, around 75% of Rantanen’s total ice time was spent with MacKinnon.
“He helped grow this organization into a Stanley Cup winner and a contender every single season. He’s a big reason why,” MacKinnon said.
In Colorado’s 2022 Stanley Cup-winning run, Rantanen had 25 points in 20 games.
Rantanen signed a six-year extension in 2019 with a robust average annual value of $9.25 million. MacKinnon eclipsed that with his 2022 extension that carried a $12.6 million AAV. As Rantanen crept closer to unrestricted free agency in Summer 2025, there were two questions swirling around the Avalanche: How much would he ask for and what would it mean for their salary structure, both in what MacKinnon was making but also in what Makar will make when his contract is up in 2027?
Rantanen was optimistic something would work out this season to keep him with the Avalanche.
“It was a weird situation overall. Negotiations were going on with Colorado. Six weeks before the deadline, we were negotiating,” he recalled. “I felt at that time that I needed to go talk to the front office, face to face. I told them I’ll be flexible. That I want to play here for a long time.
“Then a couple days later, they traded me. So that was emotional.”
The Hurricanes sent forward Martin Necas, at the time their leading scorer, to Colorado in a package for Rantanen. When the Hurricanes reached out before the trade to explore a sign-and-trade with Rantanen, he told them his focus was on staying in Colorado.
“They still did the trade. That was their decision,” he said.
He described his first couple of days with Carolina as “shocking.” Rantanen claims he joined the Hurricanes with an open mind. But after a couple of weeks with the team, Rantanen didn’t feel like it was home. That included “where I fit in the playing style,” as he adapted to coach Rod Brind’amour and his team structure.
Rantanen has refuted speculation that he arrived in Raleigh with a trade list in hand. He also said reports that it was “a family decision” not to sign long-term to stay in Raleigh weren’t accurate. “It was a hockey decision at the end of the day and nothing else,” he said.
Rantanen provided Carolina GM Eric Tulsky with a short list of trade destinations, if they didn’t want him as a free-agent rental who left for nothing in the summer.
Dallas GM Jim Nill said the Hurricanes began making exploratory calls about two weeks before the trade deadline.
“We were one of the teams they called to see if there was interest, and then with about a week to 10 days before the trade deadline, we said, ‘You know what? Let’s look at it,’ but still not thinking that was the direction we were going to go,” he said.
Eventually, that was the direction they went in, sending promising young forward Logan Stankoven and four draft picks to the Hurricanes to land Rantanen.
As much as things had shifted dramatically for Rantanen, they suddenly shifted for the Stars as well.
“It definitely changes things when you have a guy like that, a star player. It changes the identity of your team,” DeBoer said.
“I think we’ve been built around four lines and waves of pressure and work. Probably more like a Carolina-type identity. I think when you add a player like that, you have to take on a little bit of a different identity,” the coach said. “You have to coach your team a little bit differently. You have to get him out there more. So I think that’s the challenge is to integrate him and build around that without losing what’s made us successful here.”
Rantanen’s postseason dominance is directly linked to him finally feeling at ease in Dallas.
Finally being with his people helped.
BEFORE GAME 4 against the Winnipeg Jets, the Stars’ social media feed published a photo of five players with the caption, “For the first time, our new Finnish Mafia is at full strength.”
For the first time, our new Finnish Mafia is at full strength. 🇫🇮 pic.twitter.com/dv1t5nfJfM
— X – Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) May 14, 2025
Rantanen (born in Nousiainen) stood smiling between forward Roope Hintz (Tampere) and defenseman Miro Heiskanen (Espoo). On the other side of that trio were center Mikael Granlund (Oulu) and defenseman Esa Lindell (Vantaa).
That 3-1 win marked the first game in which all five Dallas Finns were playing in the same game. Heiskanen was lost to a knee injury before Granlund was acquired from the San Jose Sharks in February, and Rantanen arrived at the deadline. Along with goalie Jake Oettinger, the Finns were the difference: Granlund had a hat trick in the win, with assists going to Rantanen and a returning Heiskanen, who hoped the Finnish 5 could play as a unit at some point.
“We’ll see if they put us together there,” Heiskanen said. “That would be nice. Maybe next game.”
Rantanen played the majority of his time with Hintz after coming over from Carolina, but played only 6:55 with Granlund at 5-on-5 in the regular season. That changed in the playoffs, where 65% of Rantanen’s even-strength ice time has been spent with Granlund as his center.
“It’s great to be on the same side, for sure,” Granlund said. “We all can see what he’s doing out there right now. He’s such a great player, and he’s playing at a really high level.”
The line of Hintz, Rantanen and Granlund is plus-3 in goal differential, and has an on-ice shooting percentage of 15.4%.
Smith said the Stars players were waiting for DeBoer to unite the Finns.
“We we were talking about it for a couple weeks: Put the Finns together and let them deal with it,” Smith said. “Let them get angry at each other, let them be happy with each other, let them deal with the situation. And finally Pete did it. And, like I said, Mikko now looks comfortable.”
1:15
Mikael Granlund completes first career playoff hat trick
Mikael Granlund scores three goals for the Stars in Game 4 vs. the Jets.
That line is one factor behind Rantanen’s record-setting scoring pace in the playoffs. The Stars’ power play is another, where he has two goals and four assists for a unit clicking at a 32.4% conversion rate.
Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said defending Rantanen has gotten tougher with that line clicking.
“He maybe doesn’t get enough credit for how well he does make plays and that line is certainly dangerous,” he said. “He’s a big man and he had the puck a lot. Again, the biggest thing is time and space. I know that you hear that a lot in hockey, but at the end of the day, the more he holds onto [the puck], the more he’s comfortable, the harder it is to deny what he’s trying to do next.”
What Rantanen is trying to do next is complete the mission.
Continue his push for the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, an award for which he’s currently the favorite. Shatter the conference finals ceiling the Stars bumped up against in the last two postseasons. Lift the Stanley Cup again, this time without MacKinnon lending a hand. Prove that the Stars’ investment in him is a sound one. Make Colorado regret trading him, if that hadn’t already been communicated when Rantanen went Beast Mode — or is that Moose Mode? — in eliminating the Avs in the first round.
“Somehow the deal should have probably gotten done in Colorado. It didn’t. So he’s like, ‘I’m trying to prove that I’m elite world class,'” Smith said.
“If you want to say he’s a mission, I can understand that. Look all the way around the room. Everybody’s got something that they want to prove to everybody and prove about themselves. Right now, [Mikko is] trying to prove that, ‘Hey, I’m worth it.'”
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