Stars Notes: Seguin, Lindell, Kanzig, Defense

While the Stars would understandably like to lock up center Tyler Seguin to a long-term contract extension, NBC Sports’ James O’Brien believes he’d be better off waiting until next summer to sign instead.  For starters, he may want to see if this roster is closer to contention; despite their offensive talent in recent years, Dallas has missed the playoffs in three of the past five seasons and has just one postseason series victory over the two times they did make it.  It’s understandable that he may want to see if they get back on the right track under new head coach Jim Montgomery before committing.

There’s also the potential for Seguin to leave money on the table as many often do when foregoing testing the open market.  If he’s looking to maximize his pay, waiting until July may be the way to go, especially based on the interest and offers for John Tavares, who received $11MM per year from Toronto.  It’s unlikely he’d get that type of deal signing now.  Seguin’s case is certainly going to be one to watch for as 2018-19 progresses if they’re unable to agree on an extension by October.

More from Dallas:

• Although Seguin is justifiably drawing all of the attention when it comes to a potential extension, Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News suggests that defenseman Esa Lindell may be a candidate for one as well. He’s coming off of a quality season that saw him post a career-high 27 points while logging over 22 minutes per night for the first time, the second-highest ATOI on the team.  The 24-year-old has one year left on his current deal with a $2.2MM cap hit and will be a restricted free agent with arbitration eligibility in July.
• Defenseman Keenan Kanzig has inked a one-year deal with Idaho of the ECHL, the Dallas affiliate announced. The physical blueliner was a third-round pick of the Flames (67th overall) back in 2013 but has spent his entire career thus far at the minor league level.  He was moved to Carolina last summer as part of the Eddie Lack trade and spent all of last year in the ECHL where he had five assists and 106 penalty minutes in 63 games which resulted in him being non-tendered back in June.
• The Stars had interest in bringing back defenseman Greg Pateryn this summer, notes Sean Shapiro of The Athletic (Twitter link). However, they were looking at him to play a sixth or seventh role while Pateryn was looking for a bigger contract than someone in that role would receive.  In the end, he went to Minnesota on a three-year, $6.75MM contract while in turn, Dallas brought in veteran Roman Polak on a one-year, $1.3MM pact to play the role they had envisioned for Pateryn.