Colorado Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland could not have fathomed that Mikko Rantanen would end up with the Dallas Stars when he orchestrated the initial trade with the Carolina Hurricanes in late January.
MacFarland would have needed to summon Nostradamus in order to glean into the events that would unfold over the coming weeks.
The Hurricanes made a mistake trading for Rantanen without having an extension in place. I suppose the club was confident that Rantanen would find his footing there and would sign a deal soon enough.
Reports suggest that the Hurricanes were willing to make Rantanen the highest-paid player in team history. After all, they wanted to avoid a reprise of the Jake Guentzel debacle they endured the previous season.
But when Rantanen balked at re-signing with Carolina, the Hurricanes panicked and shopped Rantanen again.
Here’s where karma kicks in.
Insider Nick Kypreos first reported that the Hurricanes had a deal in place with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The deal would have sent Mitch Marner to the Hurricanes with Rantanen, and a $100 million-plus deal in place to keep Rantanen in Toronto.
Rantanen was down with the deal.
But Marner and the Hurricanes backed out. Marner did not waive his no-trade clause while the Hurricanes felt that they could meet the Leafs in the Eastern Conference Final. So, they chose not to trade Rantanen to a potential rival.
The Hurricanes wanted to move Rantanen to a Western Conference team. The Edmonton Oilers were also among the suitors pushing hard to get Rantanen. According to some sources, the Hurricanes didn’t like the Oilers’ offer.
So, the winning bid was Dallas.
Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche were on a collision course for months
Since the calendar turned to 2025, the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche were on a collision course for the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs. The only question mark was who would finish in second or third.
But the playoff matchup had all but been decided.
Now, you could argue that the Dallas Stars just wanted to improve their team, and scooping up the best available player at the trade deadline was the right thing to do.
But the way things played out seems like they were scripted right out of a Seinfeld episode. The Avalanche got burned by the very same player they traded thousands of miles away to avoid running into him in the playoffs.
Again, you could argue that the Hurricanes did what was best for them, regardless of the Avalanche. But the fact is that both the Hurricanes and the Stars knew what they were doing. This wasn’t a random confluence of events that led to the eventual demise of the Colorado Avalanche’s season at the hands of Mikko Rantanen.
It was embedded in the Hurricanes-Stars trade itself.
Dallas Stars cap crunch karma for spiting Colorado Avalanche
The Rantanen trade was contingent on a contract extension in place before finalizing the deal. Rantanen agreed to an eight-year, $96 million deal with a $12 million cap hit.
The deal is essentially the same as what the Avalanche had originally offered before the trade. Plus, Rantanen’s contract in Dallas is purportedly lower than what the Maple Leafs had offered.
Dallas went ahead and signed Rantanen, and now, they’re in a bind. PuckPedia shows the Stars have less than $5 million in cap space, which isn’t nearly enough to re-sign all of their pending free agents.
The situation has gotten so dire for the Stars that they are reportedly shopping Jason Robertson, as Canucks insider Rick Dhaliwal reported on Tuesday.
Plus, add the fallout from the Peter DeBoer-Jake Oettinger drama from the Western Conference Final against the Edmonton Oilers, and the Stars seem to have a voodoo curse hanging over them. Even if the Stars chose to let all of their current free agents walk, including captain Jamie Benn, the $5 million in cap space would not be nearly enough to ice a competitive team next season.
Perhaps it was just bad luck in the way that things worked out for the Dallas Stars this season. But I’ve been long around sports and business to know that when organizations do things to spite competitors, they had better be careful.
Things can quickly turn around and come back to bite you in the behind.