The Stars’ playoff exit came with a handful of tough physical takeaways: Nils Lundkvist walked out of a team meeting with a raw face cut and no bandage, Roope Hintz suffered a hamstring torn in two places, and other veteran bodies were still fighting through long recoveries. This piece looks at what happened to those players, how the injuries unfolded, and what it means for the club heading into the offseason.
Nils Lundkvist showed up to the team room with a noticeable, but not covered, wound on the left side of his face after a skate blade sliced him during the series against Minnesota. He said the injury looked worse than it actually was and that he got only a few sutures. “It looked way worse than it is. I got not too many stitches, just deep cut,” Lundkvist said when speaking to reporters for the first time since the scary scene in Game 4.
The slice came during a chaotic sequence late in Minnesota, when Lundkvist was assessed a tripping penalty as Michael McCarron fell. As McCarron tumbled, his skate blade clipped Lundkvist’s face and left him bleeding badly as he skated off. He still carries a small visible gash near his temple close to the ear, a reminder of how fast a game can turn physical.
The post-game availability also revealed a much larger issue for Dallas: top-line center Roope Hintz tore his left hamstring in two spots and missed long stretches after a March 6 collision. Hintz hadn’t suited up since the injury, which happened when he tangled with Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon along the boards. That was his only game for the Stars after the Olympics and before the long rehab stretch.
Hintz described the moment with blunt clarity, saying he’d been grinding through rehab and then felt the leg give during an intense play. “I was getting there,” Hintz said. “It was a lot of rehabbing and stuff like that, and then I was getting close, and I kind of re-injured it again a little bit.” He walked off the ice holding the back of his left leg and was unable to place weight on it.
Other roster pieces dealt with their own health battles. Mikko Rantanen, who joined Hintz at the Olympics and returned for a handful of games late in the season, finished the cup run with one goal and six assists against Minnesota. He missed a big chunk of the campaign after the Games and tried to ramp up late, but it wasn’t quite the same performance level he had before the break.
“It’s unfortunate because I was feeling really good before the Olympics. … Coming back at the end of regular season, I didn’t feel like I got to the level where I was probably before Olympics,” Rantanen said, reflecting on the stop-and-start nature of his return. The fitful schedule and recovery time left him chasing the rhythm he had earlier in the season, and that showed in the stretch run.
Coach Glen Gulutzan underlined how tough it is to get back into peak form after long layoffs, pointing to injury timelines and the reality of trying to catch a team that’s already in motion. “He was injured for a long, long period of time and it’s hard to get on a moving train,” Gulutzan said. “He had a significant injury. Was he healthy? Yep, he worked hard to get back earlier than expected. … Medically, yeah, he was healthy, but he was playing catch-up.”
The Stars also announced a two-year, $3.5 million deal for Lundkvist before the playoffs, an investment that now comes with the offseason question of how to keep core pieces healthy. Veteran Tyler Seguin, who played only 27 games before undergoing ACL surgery in December, is targeting about nine months for recovery and hopes to be ready by training camp. “So that’s my goal,” he said. “I feel deep down I’ll be as strong as ever.”
