The offseason has arrived for half of the league’s teams that aren’t taking part in the playoffs plus those who have already been eliminated. Accordingly, it’s now time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months. Next up is a look at Dallas.
Coming into the season, the Stars were viewed as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender with one of the more well-rounded groups, albeit with a new head coach in Glen Gulutzan, back for a second stint with the team. However, while they finished third overall in the standings, their reward was a first-round battle with Minnesota (the seventh-best team) thanks to the gauntlet that is the Central Division. After coming up short in that round, GM Jim Nill is in for a busy summer. Here’s what should be on his checklist.
Guard Against A Bourque Offer Sheet
While there is a prominent pending restricted free agent to re-sign (which we’ll get to shortly), there is another one whose timing is perhaps more urgent. That would be forward Mavrik Bourque. This had the potential to be a problem last year but Dallas got ahead of it, signing him early. But it came at a cost. In exchange for taking a below-market $950K contract, Bourque only received a one-year deal. That means he’s a pending RFA this summer and this time, he has salary arbitration eligibility.
Bourque’s sophomore season saw him improve from 25 points to 41, thanks to 20 goals and 21 assists while his playing time jumped up by nearly three minutes per contest. He went from being more of a depth player to a relied-on second liner along the way and top-six players tend to be rewarded handsomely should things get to a hearing.
That’s where things get difficult. Dallas doesn’t want to take Bourque to arbitration and run the risk of a higher award than they can afford with their current salary cap structure. On the other hand, if they wait to sign him and focus on Jason Robertson, he becomes a threat for an offer sheet given that Dallas only has $10MM in cap room, per PuckPedia.
Using this summer’s offer sheet thresholds, a team could plausibly try to sign Bourque to a short-term deal worth $4.77MM per season and only be required to surrender a second-round pick in return. That’s plausibly higher than he could receive in arbitration and much higher than the Stars could conceivably match with Robertson’s contract looming as well.
Accordingly, that sets an artificial deadline for Dallas to try to get something done. Basically, June 30th becomes the last date for ‘safe talks’. After that, an offer sheet could be in play, or salary arbitration if either side decides to file. That gives them about three weeks to figure something out and protect themselves from a potentially undesirable situation later on.
Re-Sign Robertson
Let’s move on to the big one now, that being Robertson’s contract. Back in 2022, Dallas didn’t have a ton of cap flexibility (it’s somewhat of an ongoing theme for them) and opted for a rare four-year bridge deal, one that gave Robertson a huge raise off his entry-level deal but kept his salary below market value for a little while longer. But it was structured in such a way to land him a pricier deal at its expiration with a $9.3MM qualifying offer that carries arbitration rights.
The 26-year-old provided fantastic value on the contract. Robertson hit the 80-point mark in all four seasons with the first and last years being his best. In the former, he finished sixth in NHL scoring with 109 points thanks to 46 goals and 63 assists. Then, after putting up two straight 80-point campaigns, he bounced back offensively this season, tallying 45 goals along with 51 helpers before adding eight points in their opening-round exit to Colorado. Over the last four years, only eight players have recorded more points. Only one of those, Nikita Kucherov, has an AAV below $11MM (and that might change before much longer). With only one RFA year left, this next contract will almost exclusively feature the full-priced UFA-eligible seasons, making an $11MM AAV look like an absolute minimum. AFP Analytics projects he could come close to the $12MM mark on a seven-year pact. As a reminder, they don’t have that much cap space to work with.
There’s also an arbitration risk here. Because he’s only a year away from being eligible to test the open market, he’s only eligible for a one-year award regardless of who files. Accordingly, if contract talks (which are almost certainly ongoing now) don’t go well, Robertson could opt to just go through the hearing, get what he gets, and then have even more leverage a year from now as a high-end pending UFA. That puts a bit of a pressure point on talks now, even though they don’t have enough cap space to re-sign Robertson at this point. But it’s a file they have to close with a long-term agreement, keeping a star winger in the fold for the long haul.
Clear Cap Space
Now that we’ve looked at who needs to be signed, let’s get the obvious out of the way. If Robertson is going to cost more than their current cap room, and Bourque needs to be signed, then something has to give. Someone (or more than just one) will need to move. Arttu Hyry also needs a new deal while it wouldn’t be shocking if they want to bring Jamie Benn back on what would probably have to be another bonus-laden agreement.
The problem is that there aren’t a lot of obvious candidates. Tyler Seguin is entering the final year of his deal at $9.85MM but he’s coming off ACL surgery which doesn’t help his value, nor does his full no-move clause. Even if he was open to being dealt, the list might not be too long, and the fact he hasn’t played since December will make the acquiring team more hesitant. The potential saving grace is that once his $5.75MM signing bonus paid, he’s only owed $1MM in salary. At that point, if the acquiring team is just eating the contract, any lingering concerns about his availability to start the season would go out the window. Dallas would likely have to incentivize a team to take him but if it keeps Robertson and Bourque in the fold (and allow them to re-sign Benn at the same time), they’d probably do it.
The problem is that this might be the end of the list. Their other top-paid players aren’t ones they’d want to move. Matt Duchene has a full no-move clause and probably isn’t going to want to move. Esa Lindell has a full no-trade clause and, frankly, is too valuable on the back end to consider moving. Basically, anyone else making more than $4MM isn’t a viable trade candidate. Considering they need more than that in cap space, that makes things tricky.
Moving Ilya Lyubushkin at $3.25MM for the limited role he fills would save some money although they’d need a replacement body so the net savings might be closer to $2MM. Radek Faksa’s $2MM AAV could be too expensive of a luxury but, again, with a replacement body needed, the actual savings might barely be half of that. Those two moves would help a bit but probably aren’t enough to accomplish everything that they need to.
Nill knows what needs to be done in terms of cutting down their cap charge. Despite few viable options, he needs to find a way to get it done.
Look For A Defensive Upgrade
Considering their financial circumstances, this one probably falls under the wishful thinking category. But defensive improvements have been on the wish list for a while now and while they took a swing at the deadline this past season when they added Tyler Myers from Vancouver, that didn’t quite go as planned. His playing dropped by more than three minutes a night following the swap while he was scratched at one point in the postseason.
A full training camp could help, sure, but if he’s not a fit, his contract is favorable enough to move. With the Canucks paying half of it, his cost to the Stars (or an acquiring team) is only $1.5MM. That’s an affordable price for a lot of teams for a potential upgrade on the third pairing if Nill decides he wants to try a different type of blueliner.
If Seguin ultimately moves to open up cap space, then Lyubushkin could be moved in a player-player swap to change up the defense corps as well.
In an ideal world, they’d find a way to upgrade in their top four but that’s rather unrealistic given the circumstances. But if there’s a way to make an affordable upgrade on the third pairing or shuffle up the personnel to fit Gulutzan’s system better, that would still be a useful approach to take. But until they deal with the two forwards, they won’t be able to do much on this end.
Photo courtesy of Jerome Miron-Imagn Images.