The Stars have filed paperwork declaring forward Tyler Seguin out for the remainder of the season, including the playoffs, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. Under this season’s new rules regarding long-term injured reserve, that declaration increases the Stars’ LTIR pool from its current $3.67MM to roughly $9.7MM ahead of next week’s trade deadline, unlocking more than $6MM in additional cap space.
Seguin, 34, underwent surgery to repair a torn ACL back on Dec. 16, but the Stars did not issue a recovery timeline. Later that week, Dallas said they’d re-evaluate him following the Olympic break and make a determination on his status from there. Evidently, this week’s testing revealed he’s at least around four months away from returning, ruling him out of a potential Stanley Cup Final run.
Seguin, whose contract ends following the 2026-27 campaign, will have played just 47 regular-season contests over the past two years, a hair over 25%. He had hip surgery in December 2024 that took out most of his regular season but permitted him to return for the playoffs. He’ll have no such luck this time around, though.
Even as the 2010 second overall pick deals with several severe injuries in the latter half of his career, he’s maintained his status as a consistent top-six producer in the Lone Star State. Since sustaining a hip injury in 2020 that nearly ended his career, he’s averaged 26 goals and 57 points per 82 games while skating around 17 minutes per game. He’s not sniffing the consistent 70-to-80-point production that defined his prime, but he had 17 points in 27 games this season before the ACL tear and produced over a point per game in his truncated showing last season.
It’s a definite blow to a Stars team that isn’t scoring as much as they’d like this season, but it does allow them to address that issue in earnest by next Friday afternoon. After finishing top 10 in the league in goals in each of the last three seasons, they’ve dropped back to 11th place at 3.33 goals per game this year. In The Fourth Period’s latest trade board, David Pagnotta noted Dallas general manager Jim Nill has at least worked the phones on names like Nazem Kadri, Blake Coleman, and Brayden Schenn up front while displaying interest in Luke Schenn, Tyler Myers, Justin Faulk and others to address their relatively weak right-shot depth on defense.
None of those pickups would have been possible without moving significant money the other way if they didn’t make Seguin ineligible to play again this season. They were already eating into about half their LTIR pool to stay compliant as things were, leaving them with just under $1.94MM in deadline cap space. That number now jumps to nearly $8MM by shifting Seguin to season-ending LTIR.
The window is starting to close for the Stars to get the big hardware, Nill has done a fantastic job in Dallas as the GM, But, The Stars have to get younger.
Holy Badtakeapalusa Batman. Otteniger is signed til 2030, their big 2 of their big 3 D are locked up after 2030 and Miro expires 29. Hintz, Johnson and Rantenen are locked up till 2030. Yes they have Benn and Seguin putting the average age of the team higher but Benn is a UFA and im sure Seguin will be on LTIR all next season.
Anyways what in that shows that their window is closing where their entire core is locked up for the next 4 seasons after this one
Trochek would make alot of sense here.
O’Reilly makes even better sense, cap wise.
Stamkos?
Funny cause all of those would work well, which as much as I don’t like the stars winning games, is an obvious testament to how good of a GM Jim Nill is. Gotta give the man credit.
@Josh, while I figure there is close to zero chance this happens, how much space would open up if the Panthers went this route with Barkov?