All the Stars really needed was one more hole to escape. That and, of course, Mikko Rantanen.
Head coach Pete DeBoer raised his Game 7 record to a crazy 9-0 (he’s 3-0 in Dallas) and all it took was a third-period hat trick from Rantanen in a wild 4-2 Game 7 win over Colorado.
Related:5 thoughts from Stars-Avs Game 7: Mikko Rantanen hat trick saves Dallas’ season
In Game 6, Rantanen and Roope Hintz made NHL history by becoming the first teammates to score four points in a single period. But that was a footnote in Colorado’s 7-4 win that made Saturday’s Game 7 necessary. So Rantanen sent one better with a hat trick in the final 13 minutes of the game.
Welcome to Dallas, Mikko.
When Colorado took a 1-0 lead to the locker room with 20 minutes to go, there was a considerable level of anxiety in the AAC. When Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado’s Hart Trophy winner and the Stars’ nemesis in this series, scored his seventh goal of the first round just 31 seconds into the third period, thoughts about the rapidly approaching off-season weren’t far behind.
Then Rantanen struck. And struck again. And, just for good measure, tossed in an empty-net goal with 2.7 seconds to play.
The former Colorado winger — and already the Stars’ leading scorer in this series coming into the game — skated into the Avs’ zone almost unguarded and launched a wrist shot past Mackenzie Blackwood with more than 12 minutes left to play. When Colorado’s super defenseman Cale Makar broke a stick and took a penalty on a visitors’ power play, it sent Dallas on the man advantage seconds later and Rantanen tied the game on a wraparound goal with 6:14 to go.
Now the building was alive, and momentum — not always tangible in playoff hockey — seemed to be firmly riding with the Stars.
Just moments later, Jack Drury took a holding penalty and this time Wyatt Johnston — who had a Game 7 winner against Seattle two years ago — scored on one of those bad-angle shots he has made with regularity in his three seasons here. With 3:56 to play, a Stars team that looked awfully dead with 13 minutes left held a 3-2 lead.
Related:Wyatt Johnston puts another feather in his Game 7 hat in Stars’ win: ‘He’s special’
The Stars held off Colorado’s attack with the goaltender pulled in the final two minutes and the towel-waving crowd reached a new stage of delirium when Rantanen deposited one more puck in the empty net. Even if it wasn’t quite like beating Colorado in seventh games at Reunion Arena in 1999 and 2000 to reach the Stanley Cup Final, well, this was still as good as it gets for the first round.
“He took over the series the last three games,” DeBoer said. “I mean, this is the best league in the world, and that’s a top-five team we were playing. I know I haven’t had a player string together the three games he had in 5, 6 and 7.”
For 45 minutes, it seemed like asking Dallas to beat a team that is roughly its equal while playing without two of its top three or four players — defenseman Miro Heiskanen and winger Jason Robertson — was simply too much. And understandably so. If that had been the difference over an exhausting seven-game battle, it would have been hard to say where Dallas had really failed in this series.
No one has to worry about it now.
A team that was this close to elimination Saturday night gets to sit back, watch the Jets play the Blues Sunday night and then figure out if it’s time to fly to Winnipeg or host St. Louis in Round 2.
The Stars made the Western Conference finals the last two springs. Their goal is to dig just a bit deeper.
The return of two stars could make that a much smoother ride. DeBoer said Saturday night he thinks both Heiskanen and Robertson will play in the next round.
“I don’t know if that will be Game 1 or Game 3 or Game 5,” he said.
Dallas will take what it can get. Anything sounds simpler than weathering the storm the Stars just navigated.
Then again, who knows how much help Mikko Rantanen, the league’s leading scorer with 11 points in the last three games and 12 in the series, really needs, anyway.
Twitter: @TimCowlishaw
More from the Stars’ Game 7 win
— 5 thoughts from Stars-Avs Game 7: Mikko Rantanen hat trick saves Dallas’ season
— Wyatt Johnston puts another feather in his Game 7 hat in Stars’ win: ‘He’s special’
— Stars coach Pete DeBoer’s ‘super impressive’ Game 7 record is now the best in pro sports
— Winnipeg Jets or St. Louis Blues? Who should Stars want to face in second round?
— Avalanche, Nathan MacKinnon stunned after season ends at the hands of Dallas Stars
— Stars coach Pete DeBoer expects both Miro Heiskanen, Jason Robertson to play in Round 2
— National reaction to Stars’ win: Mark Game 7 down as a classic in Dallas sports history
Playoff pandemonium: See photos as Stars complete season-saving comeback at AAC
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