The Dallas Stars have begun getting some work done to bring back their core that carried them to the Stanley Cup Finals this year as the team announced they have re-signed defenseman Andrej Sekera to a two-year, $3MM contract with an AAV of $1.5MM.
“Andrej did an outstanding job coming in and immediately making a difference on our back end last season,” said general manager Jim Nill. “With his intelligence and experience, we look forward to Andrej continuing to play an impactful role in our defense corps.”
Sekera, who struggled with injuries while with the Edmonton Oilers the previous two years, came over to add some veteran depth for Dallas and emerged as a solid third-pairing defenseman and was an important part of the team’s penalty kill. While the 34-year-old’s offense isn’t on par with his numbers from his younger days (he had two goals and eight points in 57 games last year), he did provide solid defense and was third on the team with 75 blocked shots. The veteran averaged 18:00 of ATOI this year. He appeared in all 27 playoff games for the Stars and should continue to play a significant role next season.
Even though the team has seven defenseman already signed for next season before signing Sekera, Nill has a history of bringing in veteran depth defensemen to fill out his roster such as Roman Polak and Sekera. In fact, Sekera is the fifth defenseman on the roster who is left-handed. That leaves the team with a little under $14MM to sign all their free-agents, including signing restricted free agents Roope Hintz, Denis Gurianov, and Radek Faksa, as well as trying to re-sign veterans Anton Khudobin and Corey Perry.