In extremely rare cases, trade deadline pickups can alter a team’s fortunes — not just for a single spring, but for years to come. And, given the way he’s played in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, it’s easy to believe Mikko Rantanen will be the next name to join the short list of players who’ve done it.
After beginning the playoffs with a single assist in four games, Rantanen has been a beast for the Dallas Stars, notching 18 points in his past seven outings. Overall, he leads the league in points (19) and goals (nine).
‘Moose’ has lowered his antlers and ripped through the post-season.
Obviously, Rantanen and the Stars have some work to do — they’re still nine wins from their ultimate goal — before we can mention him with the all-time deadline pickups. Still, it’s worth flagging a couple of names of players who made big-time contributions over multiple years after being late-season acquisitions.
Butch Goring remains the go-to example of a player who landed in a new spot and pushed that team over the top. Of course, once he helped get the New York Islanders up the mountain, they stayed there for quite a while.
The Isles got Goring from the L.A. Kings on March 10, 1980 when he was 30 years old. That spring, the two-way centre helped New York — which had a great young corps that had lost out before the Cup final in five straight springs — get over the hump with 19 points in 21 games. The next year, Goring’s 20 points in 18 games helped the Islanders repeat as champions and earned him the Conn Smythe Trophy. New York, of course, wound up winning four consecutive titles and — from the underappreciated-records file — 19 straight playoff series with Goring in the lineup.
From both an instant and long-term impact perspective, it’s hard to see anybody challenging that legacy.
That said, Ron Francis — like Rantanen — was a truly elite player who changed teams at the deadline and impacted his new club’s fortunes for a nearly 10-year period. Francis was dealt from Hartford to Pittsburgh three days after his 28th birthday on March 4, 1991. The Pens won the first of back-to-back Cups four months later and Francis recorded 100 points in 97 career playoff games with Pittsburgh from 1991 to 1998.
At the start of the next decade, the Colorado Avalanche were in search of a follow-up Cup to pair with their 1996 triumph. One year after dealing for legendary Bruin Ray Bourque at the deadline, the Avs went out and got 31-year-old Rob Blake from Los Angeles on Feb. 21, 2001. Blake wound up leading all defencemen in scoring that spring with 19 points in 23 games and played an absolutely staggering team-high 29:26 per night for Colorado. The Avs defeated the New Jersey Devils in seven games to capture the team’s second title and get that career-closing ring for Bourque.
The next season, Blake finished third in Norris voting and helped Colorado get all the way back to Game 7 of the Western Conference final, where the Avs ultimately fell to Detroit. In all, Blake played 68 career post-season contests with the Avalanche, recording 43 points and seeing an average of just over 27 minutes per game.
We’ll have to see if the 28-year-old Rantanen — who inked an eight-year extension on deadline day that will make Dallas home for a long time — wins a Cup in his first go with a new team the way Goring, Francis and Blake did. It’s worth nothing, however, that unlike any of those three guys, Rantanen landed with a championship pedigree on his resume thanks to a 2022 title in Colorado.
Given all the above, it will come as no surprise Rantanen tops our list of the best 2025 deadline pickups by teams still competing for the Cup in Round 2. He’s not the only new guy doing great things in the playoffs, though, and our ranking of the eight best deadline acquisitions will illustrate that point.
1. Mikko Rantanen, Dallas Stars
What’s left to say? Rantanen has been everything the Stars could have hoped for and more, recording back-to-back hat tricks in Game 7 of their decisive win over the Colorado Avalanche in Round 1 and Game 1 of their second-round matchup with the Jets. The big winger has recorded three-or-more points in five of Dallas’ past seven games.
His team is one win from the Western Conference final and he’s putting together a spring for the ages.
