What Joel Kiviranta’s Return Actually Gives the Dallas Stars

A familiar face returned to the Dallas Stars during this season’s Free Agency. Joel Kiviranta signed a one-year, $1 million contract on July 1, returning to the organization that gave him his NHL start after three seasons with the Colorado Avalanche.

“Our familiarity with Joel made signing him an easy choice,” general manager Jim Nill said in the announcement. For anyone who lived through the 2020 bubble, no introduction is needed. For those who need a refresher, here is why a 30-year-old with 69 career points gets a hero’s welcome in Dallas.

From Jokerit Junior to Vaasa Sport

Kiviranta grew up in Vantaa, on Helsinki’s northern edge, and came up through the Jokerit junior system. He made his Liiga debut for Jokerit on Nov. 12, 2013, as a 17-year-old, then watched that door close when the club bolted for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) the following year. Luckily, he had a landing spot, which was Vaasan Sport, a small west-coast club freshly promoted back to Liiga after years in Mestis.

Sport lived in the bottom half of the league during those seasons, and Kiviranta became the winger the coaching staff trusted: relentless on the forecheck, dependable on the penalty kill, with enough finish to matter. He led the team with 37 points in 2017-18, then scored 16 goals in 48 games in 2018-19, third on the club. He totaled 114 points in 261 Liiga games without ever reaching a playoff round in Vaasa, and NHL teams passed on him in every draft.

In the spring of 2019, he forced the issue, winning gold at the World Championship with Finland’s underdog roster, then using the NHL out clause in his Sport contract to sign with Dallas on May 31, 2019.

An Undrafted Bet Pays Off

The two-year entry-level deal was low-risk for both sides. Kiviranta spent most of 2019-20 with the American Hockey League’s (AHL) Texas Stars, though he scored his first NHL goal on Feb. 1, 2020, against the New Jersey Devils. When the pandemic pushed the season into the bubble, he traveled as a Black Ace (a minor-league player called up to an NHL team’s roster during the Stanley Cup Playoffs), a spare forward on the expanded postseason roster. Then Andrew Cogliano got hurt, and he got his shot.

The Night He Became JFK

Sept. 4, 2020. Game 7 of the second round against Colorado. Interim coach Rick Bowness slotted Kiviranta in for Cogliano, and the rookie in his third career playoff game scored twice in regulation. His second tied it 4-4 just 10 seconds after Vladislav Namestnikov had put the Avalanche ahead late in the third.

In overtime, defenseman Andrej Sekera snuck behind the offensive net and fed him in the slot, and Kiviranta buried the series winner to complete the hat trick in a 5-4 victory. He was the first player with a Game 7 hat trick since Wayne Gretzky in 1993.

All 3 goals by Joel Kiviranta with Finnish commentary
by u/msucsgo in hockey

“We had a secret Finnish weapon over here,” Jamie Benn said afterward. Stars fans handed him the nickname almost immediately: JFK, for Joel “F***ing” Kiviranta, a middle name not quite appropriate for the site, said on the Finnish Broadcast after his third goal. He rode that run to the Stanley Cup Final, finishing with five goals and an assist in 14 games.

The Finnish press caught the moment from the inside. Yle’s NHL correspondent noted that the bubble Stars handed out a room MVP after each clinching win, and after the Game 7 hat trick, the award went to Kiviranta, whose message to the group was that they were not going home. Yle credited his 200-foot, north-south motor for keeping him in the lineup once the injuries cleared.

The regular seasons never matched the legend. Kiviranta totaled 28 points in 163 games as a Star, topping out at eight goals in 2022-23. The postseason kept telling a different story, with five points in 15 games during the 2023 push to the Western Conference Final. When his contract expired that summer, Dallas let him walk.

Three Years In Colorado And Olympic Bronze

Kiviranta attended Avalanche camp in 2023 on a professional tryout and took an AHL contract with the Colorado Eagles rather than head home. A month later, he earned an NHL deal and opened with a goal and two assists in his Avalanche debut, an 8-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks on Nov. 15, 2023.

The bet on himself peaked in 2024-25: career highs of 16 goals and 23 points in 79 games, including his first regular-season hat trick in a 5-2 win over the Seattle Kraken on Dec. 22, 2024. Last season went the other way. Concussion and lower-body injuries limited him to 51 games and a 3-6-9 line, a down year.

The underlying play held up, though. Colorado outscored opponents 20-12 with Kiviranta on the ice at 5-on-5, controlled 59.5% of the shots, and leaned on him for over a minute of shorthanded ice time per game for a fourth straight season. He finished plus-22 across his two final years with the Avalanche, the quiet value that keeps a player employed while nobody notices. Finnish analyst Ilkka Palomäki made that point writing for Vuohi, calling Kiviranta an even more anonymous version of Florida’s Eetu Luostarinen.

In February, Kiviranta scored twice in five games for Finland at the Milano Cortina Olympics, and the Finns beat Slovakia 6-1 in the bronze medal game. Five of his medal-winning teammates now share his dressing room: Miro Heiskanen, Roope Hintz, Esa Lindell, Mikko Rantanen and Arttu Hyry.

What The Return Means For Dallas

The Stars needed exactly this kind of contract. Dallas posted a 112-point season and finished second in the Central before a first-round exit against the Minnesota Wild, and the front office has spent the opening days of the offseason clearing money. The club moved Mavrik Bourque and Ilya Lyubushkin to the Nashville Predators, and a Jason Robertson extension still looms over the cap sheet.

Kiviranta fills the cheapest and clearest one. At $1 million, the 5-foot-11 winger gives head coach Glen Gulutzan a left shot who slides up and down the lineup and kills penalties. The signing also pushes Dallas’ Finnish group to six players, and the fit runs deeper than a passport. Kiviranta already knows the market, the fanbase and half the room.

Let’s be clear, though. Looking back, Dallas did not lose to Minnesota on the forecheck or the kill. It lost because the offense struggled at five-on-five, going 209 minutes without an even-strength goal. Only four of 15 series goals were scored at even strength. Kiviranta is a north-south checker, not a chance-creator, so the even-strength scoring stays exactly where it was.

But there is a place where Kiviranta does help. The Stars ran a top-three penalty kill for three straight years and watched it slide to 13th last season, and Lyubushkin, one of its penalty-kill defensemen, is now gone. Kiviranta has killed penalties as a fixture for four straight years, so he steps into a unit that actually sprung a leak. I don’t expect this signing to be life-changing, but he is a cheap, precise patch for two holes that showed this offseason, and getting JFK to fill them for a million dollars is a great deal.