{"id":457684,"date":"2026-02-14T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/457684\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T08:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T08:00:13","slug":"mikko-rantanen-has-viral-moment-with-young-fan-at-olympics-after-finlands-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/457684\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikko Rantanen has viral moment with young fan at Olympics after Finland\u2019s game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Mikko Rantanen became the first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/\">Dallas Star<\/a> to register a goal at these Olympics (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/2026\/02\/13\/watch-stars-thomas-harley-scores-as-team-canada-cruises-past-switzerland-at-winter-olmpics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/2026\/02\/13\/watch-stars-thomas-harley-scores-as-team-canada-cruises-past-switzerland-at-winter-olmpics\/\">Thomas Harley joined him shortly after<\/a>) and helped lead <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/2026\/02\/13\/stars-mikko-rantanen-scores-late-to-cap-off-finlands-win-over-sweden\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/2026\/02\/13\/stars-mikko-rantanen-scores-late-to-cap-off-finlands-win-over-sweden\/\">Finland to a win over Sweden on Friday<\/a>, but that wasn\u2019t why he went viral.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">After the game, Rantanen gave a young fan his stick when walking to the locker room. Shortly after giving the child his hockey stick, he apparently realized he couldn\u2019t give his stick away and returned and asked for it back. The child gave it back, Rantanen went back to the locker room and returned to give him a pair of his game-worn gloves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">It\u2019s not clear why Rantanen needed his stick back, but the child was thrilled with his consolation prize nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Watch the full exchange below.<\/p>\n<p>Sports Roundup<\/p>\n<p class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__3beff secondaryRoman secondaryRoman-20 text-center text-gray-dark\">Get the latest D-FW sports news, analysis and opinion delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, Kevin Sherrington&#8217;s A La Carte.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/stars\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Find more Stars coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikko Rantanen became the first Dallas Star to register a goal at these Olympics (Thomas Harley joined him&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5117],"tags":[196,147,5278,5,270,4,2602,43,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-457684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-stars","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-stars","10":"tag-dallasstars","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-mikko-rantanen","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-olympics","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-stars"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116067934069198467","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}