Offseason Checklist: Dallas Stars

The offseason has arrived with the draft and free agency fast approaching.  Accordingly, it’s time to look at what each team needs to accomplish this summer.  Next up is a look at Dallas.

The Stars went all-in this season, swinging a pair of significant trades near the trade deadline to add multiple key pieces in the hopes that doing so would help them take that next step and reach the Stanley Cup Final.  Instead, despite the extra talent, they once again came up just short.  Now, GM Jim Nill has some work in the coming weeks to do to keep as much of his core group together for next season.

Hire A New Coach

It’s not very often that a team that has the type of playoff success that Dallas has changes coaches.  But a week after the Stars were eliminated, Nill elected to make a change, dismissing head coach Peter DeBoer after three seasons with the team, all of them ending with losses in the Western Conference Final.  His handling of goaltender Jake Oettinger during and after the final game of the Edmonton series is believed to be a contributing factor in the decision, as was the fact that DeBoer was entering the final year of his contract with the team.  Clearly, an extension wasn’t in the offing and rather than have a coach in his ‘lame duck’ year, they opted for a change.

The timing of the move was somewhat curious as, prior to the move, all the other vacancies around the league had been filled.  Had Nill made the decision even a few days earlier, he could have had a chance to speak to some of the new bench bosses that were hired elsewhere.

Accordingly, the early thought was that Nill might just promote from within, meaning one of assistants Alain Nasreddine (who briefly ran the bench in New Jersey) or Misha Donskov, along with AHL head coach Neil Graham, would be the speculative favorites.  In recent days, Oilers assistant Glen Gulutzan (who Nill fired as Dallas’ head coach in 2013) has become a speculative candidate for the opening as well.

Beyond those options, the usual options that came up in other coaching searches include veterans Bruce Boudreau, John Tortorella, Jay Woodcroft, and Gerard Gallant with first time options like Mitch Love, Jay Leach, and Manny Malhotra (who is still coaching in the Calder Cup Finals) potentially garnering consideration as the process goes on.  Additionally, they’ll also have a lead assistant role to fill after Boston hired Steve Spott as an assistant coach with them on Friday.

This isn’t something they necessarily have to have done by the draft but when free agency comes around, potential targets will want to know who they’re playing for.  With that in mind, a decision will need to be made relatively soon.

Clear Out A Defender (Or Two)

Nill has been quite busy in recent days on the transactions front, re-signing Matt Duchene to a four-year contract and then dealing away Mason Marchment to Seattle to balance the money from that move.  They’ve since re-signed defenseman Nils Lundkvist and winger Mavrik Bourque to low-cost one-year deals.  In doing so, they’ve dropped their cap space to $2.75MM per PuckPedia which sounds okay until you consider that they probably need to sign four forwards and possibly a defenseman with that money.  With a minimum salary of $775K, something has to give.

While there has been some speculation about moving out a core player (one in particular we’ll get to shortly), it feels like the Stars would prefer to chip away at creating that space with multiple moves, the Marchment one being the first.  To do that, the chipping away will need to come from the back end.

Veteran blueliner Mathew Dumba is the most logical candidate to remove from the roster.  The first season of his two-year, $7.5MM contract did not go well at all with the 30-year-old struggling to the point where he didn’t play at all in the playoffs.  That’s $3.75MM that could be used to round out the roster, perhaps to try to re-sign captain Jamie Benn.

But how to clear that contract remains to be seen.  A buyout would lower the cap hit to $1.417MM next season but add $1.167MM to the books for 2026-27.  Meanwhile, waiving and assigning him to the minors would only clear $1.15MM, leaving $2.6MM counting against the cap.  In a perfect world, trading him without retention would be Plan A but it’s likely they’ll have to incentivize a team to take him and down several draft picks, that’s not the most appealing option either.  But they’ll have to pick the best bad option and move forward from there.

There has also been some speculation about Ilya Lyubushkin.  He has two years left on his contract signed last summer with a $3.25MM cap charge.  He played more regularly during the regular season but wasn’t an every-game player in the playoffs for them.  In a perfect world, they’d keep him on the third pairing but if additional funds need to be freed up, he could be a candidate to move as well.  If nothing else, given the lack of depth of the market, Dallas should be able to move him without attaching assets unlike Dumba.

Whether it’s Dumba, Lyubushkin, or both, some more quick activity on the roster front will be needed from Nill before too long.

Make A Decision On Robertson

Knowing that a significant amount of cap space needed to be opened up (and that was before re-signing Duchene), there was plenty of speculation surrounding winger Jason Robertson.  With a $7.75MM price tag, clearing that much money would allow them to not move as many players out to keep cap-compliant.  Of course, doing so would also open up a significant hole on their top line.  There are three options the Stars have here as he enters the final year of his contract which we’ll go through here.

Trade: While this seemed to be more of an option earlier this month, it appears that Dallas has told teams that they don’t want to go this route.  But depending on how successful they are at clearing out the defensemen, it can’t be ruled out either.  At a price tag that will be cheaper than most of the top wingers on the open market (for one year, at least), there should be strong interest in a player who has reached at least 80 points in three straight years and has scored more than 40 goals in two of the last four seasons.  To keep the cap charge down, the bulk of the return could be futures-based but there would be room for them to pick up an entry-level forward who is already established, similar to Carolina’s addition of Logan Stankoven from Dallas in the Rantanen trade.

Extend: There’s a case to make that if the Stars don’t move Robertson, they should focus in on trying to sign him to a long-term extension this summer, eliminating any speculation about a trade coming into play as the season goes on.  His qualifying offer jumps to $9.3MM and he’ll be arbitration-eligible while being one year away from UFA eligibility so it’s going to take a big offer to get something done now.  Knowing the $104MM projection, simply matching his current cap hit percentage would make the offer $9.766MM which still feels on the low side given how productive he has been in the first three years of the deal.  At this point, the price tag feels likely to start at the $11MM mark, especially if it’s an early deal getting done.

Hold: This one is rather self-explanatory.  If they want to keep their options open, they can enter the season without an extension and if they struggle or find themselves too far apart on contract talks, then the idea of a trade could be entertained closer to the trade deadline or they could kick the can on extension discussions to this time next summer.  It’s probably not their preferred option but it could easily happen.

Harley Extension Talks

Robertson isn’t the only prominent player entering the final year of his contract that Dallas has, as defenseman Thomas Harley is also in that situation.  It took a while for the Stars to get a bridge deal done with him last fall but with their cap situation, they didn’t have much of a choice since a long-term pact wasn’t in the cards.  They’ll be able to at least start talks on a new deal this summer but it would be surprising to see something get done early.

While there’s an $8.5MM projected increase to the Upper Limit between 2025-26 and 2026-27, Robertson projects to take up around half of that.  And frankly, a long-term deal for Harley coming off the year he just had (50 points in over 23 minutes a night of action) is going to cost more than $8.5MM (his current cost plus the leftover increase after Robertson’s possible raise).  So at this point, a long-term extension to one of Harley or Robertson could preclude one going to the other in the near future.

However, there is one other option they could go with and that’s a second bridge deal.  Harley has three RFA-eligible years after this one so another two-year pact would fit within the remaining projected increase assuming Robertson signed an extension.  Having said that, that’s not the type of deal that typically gets signed one year out.

With all of that in mind, this could very well be a case where both sides ultimately exchange numbers and decide that more time is needed.  But Nill will need to get a sense at least of what Harley’s next deal will cost to help shape their offseason planning and determine how much future money they may need to try to clear off the books.

Photo courtesy of Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports.