FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Stars open a first-round Western Conference series Saturday against the Colorado Avalanche with a big storyline: Mikko Rantanen will face his old team wearing a Stars sweater.

What You Need To Know

  • A Western Conference first-round series between Dallas and the Avalanche tips off Saturday night

  • Rantanen was picked 10th overall by Colorado in the 2015 draft and was three weeks shy of his 19th birthday when he made his NHL debut later that year

  • Colorado traded Rantanen on Jan. 24 to Carolina in the East, where he played only 13 games, but a deadline deal March 7 sent him back to the Central Division with the Stars

Rantanen has been a playoff regular with Colorado the past seven seasons. He won a Stanley Cup with the Avalanche and is now in a new role after trades this season moved him first to Carolina and then to Dallas.

Rantanen addressed the matchup plainly. “It’s Dallas against Colorado and I’m part of Dallas. So that’s that’s how I look at it,” Rantanen said.

He spoke about the change and how he is approaching it. “Yeah, I guess we’ll see,” he said. “But, you know, it’s business and like I said, the trade didn’t happen two days ago. … It’s been a while now since I haven’t played with the Avs anymore. What is it, three months almost, so I think it’s all behind us now, and now it’s just part of a new team.”

Rantanen was the No. 10 pick in 2015 and debuted that year as a teenager. He scored 705 points in 652 regular-season games for Colorado and added 100 points in 82 playoff games before being traded late in the season. He has five goals and 13 assists in 20 games with Dallas. He finished the season with 88 points (32 goals, 56 assists) across three teams.

Avalanche coach Jared Bednar noted the change but also the reality of pro sports. “It’s going to be different. but that’s his new home, and it’s going to be his new home for eight years,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “That’s the life of pro hockey sometimes in the business side of it. So he’s going to be a big factor in this series. Again, it’s not just one player and one line.”

Colorado also benefited from other moves. Martin Necas has thrived playing on a line with Nathan MacKinnon, producing 28 points (11 goals, 17 assists) in 30 games. In goal, the Avs added Scott Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood during the season. Wedgewood went 13-4-1 with a 1.99 goals-against average and a .917 save percentage in Colorado. Blackwood posted a 22-12-3 mark with a 2.33 GAA and .913 save percentage.

The Stars have struggled to start playoff series recently, dropping Game 1 in their past seven series. Coach Pete DeBoer acknowledged that history. “There’s a real history there of starting slowly, and we’ve lived that,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “I don’t think we can hang that on this group. … New people, new year.”

DeBoer said the team has been focused despite a rough finish to the regular season. “The last 2 1/2 weeks, we’ve been looking forward to this, and I think that that was reflected in our play for a lot of it,” DeBoer said. “This is what you play for.”

Dallas will be without top goal scorer Jason Robertson because of a lower-body injury suffered in the final regular-season game. DeBoer described Robertson as week-to-week. The Stars also remain without defenseman Miro Heiskanen, who has missed 32 games with a left-knee injury and has not returned to practice since his injury on Jan. 28.

Colorado may get a boost from longtime captain Gabriel Landeskog, who has been rehabbing a knee and finished a two-game conditioning stint in the AHL last weekend. “He’s close. He’s close. He’s getting close,” Bednar said Friday. “Obviously, every day I feel like he getting a little quicker and a little bit more confident, little more sure of himself. He’ll be an option for us in this series.”

The teams split their regular-season meetings at home, with the home team winning all three games. The Stars beat Colorado in Dallas on Nov. 29, and the Avalanche later won 4-3 in overtime on March 16 when Rantanen faced his former club for the only time during the season. Last spring, Dallas won a six-game second-round series against Colorado.

The series opens Saturday and brings playoff intensity and old ties into a matchup that could shape the Western Conference bracket.