The Dallas Stars were on the ropes in Game 7 on Saturday night, trailing the Colorado Avalanche 2-0 midway through the third period. The Stara had nothing going on offense until star winger Mikko Rantanen came alive and haunted his former team.

Rantanten scored a pair of goals, the latter of which came on the power play, to tie the game at two apiece with just over six minutes remaining. After Wyatt Johnston gave the Stars the lead on another man advantage, Rantanen buried an empty-netter in the final seconds to complete his third-period hat trick in a 4-2 Stars victory.

Rantanen got off to a slow start in this series, but he came alive in the final three games to help Dallas advance. After the win, Stars center Matt Duchene gave his raw thoughts on his new teammate's heroics, via Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic.

“He just said, ‘F–k this' on that first goal,” Duchene said. “And after that, you could feel something was coming. You could just feel it. He stepped up last few games big time. It was great.”

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Rantanen finished with five goals and six assists over just the last three games, finishing with at least one of each in all three. The Avs and the Stars were knotted up at two games apiece through four games, and Rantanen proved to be the difference between the two in a razor-thin series.

That will be an especially tough pill for Colorado to swallow after the Avs traded him to Carolina this season amid a contract dispute. When those negotiations didn't get settled with the Hurricanes, the star scorer ended up back on a division rival in Dallas and is ultimately the primary reason that the Avalanche are going home in the first round.

After making it through this first-round series between two Stanley Cup contenders, the Stars will feel like they have a real chance to win it all. Peter DeBoer and company should be getting both Jason Robertson and Miro Heiskanen back at some point, and will look to keep this run going in the next round against the winner of Game 7 between the Winnipeg Jets and the St. Louis Blues.