Matt Dumba Clears Waivers, Assigned To AHL
Saturday: The team announced that Dumba has passed through waivers unclaimed. As expected, he has been assigned to AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. It will be his first action at that level since the 2014-15 when he played in 20 games for Iowa.
Friday: The Penguins announced this morning that they will place defenseman Mathew Dumba on waivers today at 1:00 pm Central. He’s been placed on the non-roster list until his waiver period ends tomorrow. The move makes room for rearguard Brett Kulak to join the active roster after being acquired from the Oilers in today’s Tristan Jarry/Stuart Skinner goalie swap.
Dumba, 31, hadn’t been much of a factor to this point in the season. Acquired from the Stars over the summer in a salary dump, he’s been in the press box more than he’s been on the ice.
When dressed, he’s recorded a 1-2–3 scoring line and a -5 rating in 11 appearances. He’s averaging 14:56 of ice time per game, his lowest figure since averaging 12:27 in his first taste of NHL hockey as a 19-year-old with the Wild back in 2013-14. His poor two-way play is reflected in his 46.2 CF% and 47.9 FF% at 5-on-5, both the second-worst among qualified Penguins defenders, ahead only of Caleb Jones.
With Kulak in the mix, Jack St. Ivany returning to health, and Ryan Graves flourishing in a bottom-pairing role after starting the season on waivers, Dumba might have played his last game as a Penguin. At a $3.75MM cap hit, he won’t be claimed off waivers, even though he’s on an expiring deal.
If the righty is dead set on returning to the NHL this season, he could refuse to report to AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, allowing the Penguins to terminate his contract. He’d be walking away from whatever he’s still owed of his $3.5MM salary but could catch on somewhere else for the back half of the season on a cheaper, prorated one-year deal. If he does clear waivers and opts to report to the minors, the Penguins will still be on the hook for a $2.6MM cap hit.
While Dumba may have been one of the more offensively dynamic defensemen in the league at his peak, those days are long in the rearview. Drafted No. 7 overall by Minnesota in 2012, he broke out for 50 points and 136 hits in the 2017-18 season, prompting the Wild to sign him to a five-year, $30MM deal the following summer. He racked up 12 goals and 22 points through the first 32 games of 2018-19 before sustaining a season-ending upper-body injury.
He hasn’t been the same player since. Dumba was still a minute-muncher for the rest of his tenure in Minnesota, averaging over 22 minutes per game between 2019-20 and 2022-23, but he never sniffed 30 points again – let alone 50. Still, he turned his reputation into a pair of relatively high-value, short-term free-agent deals. He first signed a one-year, $3.9MM pact with the Coyotes in 2023 and was flipped to the Lightning at the following year’s trade deadline.
Tampa didn’t show interest in retaining him, but he still landed a two-year, $7.5MM pact from the Stars. Dumba underwhelmed from the start, though, posting 10 points and a -5 rating in 63 games while averaging 15:18 of ice time per game. He was then a healthy scratch for Dallas’ entire playoff run. His cap hit quickly became untenable for the big-spending Stars, paying a 2028 second-round pick to unload the last year of his contract on the Penguins.
Stars Trade Matt Dumba To Penguins
The Stars are trading defenseman Matt Dumba and their 2028 second-round pick to the Penguins in exchange for defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok, reports Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Both teams have since announced the trade, which doesn’t include any salary retention.
Completing the deal will make the Stars cap-compliant for the 2025-26 season. Even if Dallas has Kolyachonok on its opening night roster, he costs the league minimum $775K against the cap.
That’s $2.975MM less than Dumba’s $3.75MM cap hit, since Pittsburgh takes on the totality of his salary with no retention on Dallas’ part. That savings puts Dallas, which is currently $1.79MM above the upper limit, back under the cap.
The Stars signed Dumba to a two-year, $7.5MM contract in free agency last summer, viewed as a risky commitment at the time after the 6’1″ righty had just 12 points and a -18 rating in 76 games with the Coyotes and Lightning the year prior. The fears around the contract were quickly realized. Dumba, who turns 31 later this month, had negative possession impacts everywhere he was deployed and was out of the lineup entirely by the time the postseason rolled around.
Dumba played 63 games for the Stars last season, averaging just 15:18 per game with a 1-9–10 scoring line. He logged a minus-five rating in what amounted to his lowest usage since his rookie campaign and was a healthy scratch for all 18 playoff games.
The best years of Dumba’s NHL career came as a top-pairing piece for the Wild, who drafted him No. 7 overall in 2012. He remained there through the beginning of his steep decline in the early 2020s, leaving for Arizona in 2023 in free agency on a one-year contract. After failing to re-establish his value there, he was flipped to the Lightning at the trade deadline for two late-round picks and finished out the year as a bottom-pairing piece in Tampa before signing in Dallas in the offseason.
Dumba’s best season came back in 2017-18 as a 23-year-old, when he finished 19th in the league in scoring among defensemen with 50 points in 82 games and tied for 10th with 14 goals. He also had 12 goals and 22 points in just 32 games the following year before an upper-body injury ended his season. His offensive production never recovered, averaging just 22.4 points per 82 games since returning.
It’s unclear if Dumba will have much of a role in Pittsburgh’s lineup next season. They have three right-shot defenders ahead of him on the depth chart in Connor Clifton, Erik Karlsson, and Kris Letang, although Karlsson is well-known trade bait this summer. If he remains in the picture, though, Dumba could start the season in the press box – or even on waivers and buried in the minors – unless someone shifts to their offside.
Dumba’s price tag is exceedingly steep for the No. 6/7/8 defender he is at this stage of his career, one Dallas simply couldn’t afford to shoulder with their cap crunch after extending Mikko Rantanen and retaining UFAs Jamie Benn and Matt Duchene. They part with a second-round pick to wipe his deal off the books one year early – a steep price considering the market for cap dumps this summer, although they do well in acquiring a serviceable depth piece in Kolyachonok. They’re now without a pick before the third round in 2028.
The Penguins already had a bit of a crunch among depth defensemen after signing Alexander Alexeyev, Caleb Jones, and Parker Wotherspoon in free agency. It isn’t surprising to see them unwilling to take on a defenseman without moving one out.
They picked up Kolyachonok, a 24-year-old 6’2″ lefty with some untapped two-way potential, off waivers from Utah in February last season. He didn’t get into much game action, though, recording two assists and a minus-five rating in 12 appearances while averaging 14:20 per game. There wasn’t going to be much opportunity for him in Pittsburgh with their aforementioned additions and younger, higher-profile names like Owen Pickering pushing for more NHL ice time.
Kolyachonok, a second-rounder in 2019, has 14 points in 74 career NHL games with a minus-seven rating and 72 hits. He’ll presumably compete with veteran Alexander Petrovic to exit training camp as the extra defenseman on the NHL roster.
Sean Shapiro of DLLS Sports was first to report the Stars and Penguins were working on a trade centered around Dumba and Kolyachonok.
Image courtesy of Jerome Miron-Imagn Images.
Dallas Stars Activate Matt Dumba
The Dallas Stars’ defensive core is back to fully healthy. The organization announced they’ve activated Mathew Dumba from the injured reserve after missing the last eight games with a lower-body injury.
Dumba has produced nearly identical numbers in Dallas as he did with the Tampa Bay Lightning last year. The veteran blue-liner tallied two assists in 18 games for the Lightning after being acquired from the Arizona Coyotes at the trade deadline. Still, he was effective physically and on the defensive side of the puck but is no longer the puck-moving threat he used to be with the Minnesota Wild.
That’s largely the production the Stars received from Dumba this year when healthy. He’s added one assist in 19 games averaging the lowest ice time of his career since his sophomore campaign in 2014-15. He’s managed a solid 51.0% CorsiFor% but that should regress toward his career average of 49.2% with increased playing time.
There’s typically a casualty of any player’s activation especially on a contending team such as the Stars. The casualty of Dumba’s activation will be Lian Bichsel who won’t be recalled to Dallas for now.
The former 18th overall pick of the 2022 NHL Draft skated in all eight games that Dumba missed and scored the first goal of his NHL career during his debut on December 12th.
Bichsel seemingly made a positive first impression with the Stars but will continue developing in the AHL with the Texas Stars. He’s been similarly effective with AHL Texas scoring three goals and nine points in 21 games.
Snapshots: Tarasov, Dumba, Vanecek, Miller, Nugent-Hopkins
It has been a tough year for Blue Jackets goaltender Daniil Tarasov. The 25-year-old has played to a 4.26 GAA and a .857 SV% in his nine starts and has only played once in the last month while AHL starter Jet Greaves has seen time with Columbus since then. However, GM Don Waddell told Aaron Portzline of The Athletic (subscription link) that he has no plans to put the netminder on waivers, feeling that Tarasov has too much talent to go through unclaimed. Tarasov had some success just last season when he had a 3.18 GAA and a .908 SV% in 24 games so they’ll continue to work with him in practice for the time being. It’s a contract year for Tarasov who will be owed a $1.26MM qualifying offer with arbitration rights this summer so he’ll need to turn things around soon or risk being a non-tender candidate in June.
Elsewhere around the NHL:
- While Stars defenseman Mathew Dumba returned to practice today with a full cage, he will not suit up on Monday against Utah, relays Sam Nestler of DLLS Sports (Twitter link). He has missed the last two weeks with an upper-body injury. It has been a tough first year in Dallas for Dumba as he has been limited to just one assist in 19 games so far this season which is not the type of production the team was expecting when they signed him to a two-year, $7.5MM contract this summer.
- Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky told reporters including Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News (subscription link) that they expect to have more information on the path forward for goaltender Vitek Vanecek in the next day or two. The netminder was hit by a puck on the bench on Tuesday and was listed as week-to-week. He has since seen a specialist so further clarity on how much longer he’ll be out should be coming soon. Vanecek, a pending unrestricted free agent, has a 3.84 GAA and a .885 SV% in 14 appearances this season.
- Rangers defenseman K’Andre Miller missed today’s game and remains listed as day-to-day, mentions NHL.com’s Dan Rosen (Twitter link). New York was hoping that he’d be able to return from his upper-body injury but evidently, he wasn’t quite ready to do so. The Rangers are in action on Monday against New Jersey so it’s possible that he returns then or they could opt to give him a few more days of rest over the break. Miller has just six points in 30 games so far while sitting second in ice time among blueliners at over 21 minutes a night.
- Oilers center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was scratched tonight due to illness, notes Bob Stauffer of 880 CHED (Twitter link). The veteran had played in all 33 games before this one but is having a quiet year offensively, tallying six goals and a dozen assists. For comparison, Nugent-Hopkins had 18 goals and 49 helpers in 80 games just last season.
Stars Recall Alexander Petrovic, Place Matt Dumba On IR
The Dallas Stars have recalled defenseman Alexander Petrovic to fill in for the injured Matt Dumba, who has been shifted to injured reserve. Dumba has missed Dallas’ last three games with an upper-body injury. His IR placement is retroactive to December 8th, making Dumba eligible to be activated as soon as he’s back to full health.
This is already the second IR placement of Dumba’s season. He missed nine days of action in October after suffering a lower-body injury in the team’s October 13th win over Seattle. Dumba was placed on IR six days later but avoided surgery and a long-term absence. He’s played in the majority of Dallas’ games since returning on October 22nd, though he was healthy scratched a few times for underwhelming play. Dumba has just one assist in 19 games this season, and it didn’t come until his 12th game of the season. He’s added 19 penalty minutes, 17 shots on net, and 31 hits on the season while averaging 15:33 in ice time. Dumba’s slow play dates back to last season, when he managed just 12 points in 76 games split between the Arizona Coyotes and Tampa Bay Lightning. He signed a two-year, $7.5MM contract with Dallas this summer looking to spur the lack of production, but has since fallen into an even deeper rut.
Rookie Lian Bichsel has filled in for Dumba over the last few games, but Dallas is still facing uncertain availability for both Thomas Harley and Nils Lundkvist. Both players will be game-time decisions due to flu symptoms, an issue for many different Stars players shares Lia Assimakopoulos of the Dallas Morning News. Petrovic will be ready to fill in for either defender. He’s been Dallas’ go-to call-up on defense, and played in two NHL games earlier this season. Petrovic didn’t manage any scoring, but did record one penalty, in the outings. He’s made much more of an impact in the minor leagues, where he’s tallied 13 points in 21 games while serving as one of Texas’ alternate captains. Petrovic is a veteran of 10 pro seasons, spending much of them as a depth defender split between the major and minor leagues. He’s totaled 50 points in 266 career NHL games, and 164 points in 448 AHL games.
Evening Notes: Parssinen, Kuzmenko, Dumba
The Nashville Predators have continued to be one of the NHL’s busiest teams this season, making trades to revamp their goaltending and move out stalling veterans in favor of top prospects. It seems the latter trend could continue, with the team eyeing trades for forward Juuso Parssinen per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman in the latest 32 Thoughts. Friedman compared the rumors to Nashville’s separating from Philip Tomasino and Dante Fabbro, who have each found far more success in their new homes. Tomasino has three goals and four points in seven games with Pittsburgh, while Fabbro has seven points in 15 games with Columbus.
Parssinen has just five points through 15 games this season – four of which came in a four-game span in mid-November. He’s recorded no scoring and a -6 in seven games since that hot streak, losing grip on his third-line role along the way. This year marks Parssinen’s first with a full-time role on the Predators roster, after splitting the last two seasons between the NHL and AHL. He scored an admirable 25 points in 45 games as a rookie – coupled by nine points in 10 AHL games – in 2022-23. But Parssinen took a step back at both levels last season, scoring just 12 points in 44 NHL games and 25 points in 36 AHL games. Making the Predators roster out of training camp was an encouraging sign heading into this year, but after 15 games, the former seventh-round pick may no longer be a fit. His six-foot-three frame and serviceable play at center should draw plenty of attention from around the league, though his 42 points in 104 career games likely won’t earn Nashville a hefty return.
Other notes from around the league:
- Calgary Flames winger Andrei Kuzmenko is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Walker Duehr is expected to fill his role in Saturday’s game against Florida. Kuzmenko has just one goal and 10 points in 28 games this season. He was healthy scratched for three games at the start of the month, and has since recorded one point and a -2 in three games. He’ll need a return to full health to come with more confident scoring if he wants to ward off emerging prospects Duehr and Jakob Pelletier.
- Dallas Stars head coach Pete DeBoer provided a bit of clarity into Matt Dumba‘s injury, telling Brian Rea of Bally Sports Southwest that he is somewhere between day-to-day and week-to-week. Dumba has missed Dallas’ last two games after suffering an upper-body injury in Sunday’s matchup against Calgary. He’s been oft-injured in his first year with the Stars, limited in or outright missing 10 of Dallas’ 28 games this season. That’s made adjusting to the new setting tough, evidenced by Dumba’s one assist in 19 games – a team-low in scoring among players with more than a few games played. Dumba faced nagging injuries between 2018 and 2021, but rediscovered his health in the last two seasons. Unfortunately, he hasn’t found the scoring of his early career in the return. Once a 50-point scorer, Dumba posted just 26 points in 155 games between 2022-23 and 2023-24. He played for three teams – Minnesota, Arizona, and Tampa Bay – in that span.
Stars Recall Lian Bichsel For Potential NHL Debut
The Stars have recalled 2022 first-round pick Lian Bichsel from AHL Texas ahead of tonight’s game against the Predators, Brien Rea of FanDuel Sports Network Southwest reports. The 20-year-old could make his NHL debut with Mathew Dumba likely to sit out with an upper-body injury.
It’s Bichsel’s first in-season recall. He was summoned from the AHL during the Stars’ playoff run last season and was briefly considered an option to make his NHL debut in postseason action, but it didn’t come to pass.
The towering 6’6″, 234-lb left-shot defender is in his first full season of pro hockey in North America. The Switzerland native has been logging heavy minutes for Texas, posting three goals and six assists for nine points in 21 games with a +8 rating to lead Baby Stars defenders.
However, it’s far from Bichsel’s first taste of professional play. The well-rounded defender has logged action in a top-level European pro league in every season since 2020-21, first in his native Switzerland with EHC Biel-Bienne before making the jump to the Swedish Hockey League with Leksands IF and Rögle BK. The physical shutdown defender made 29 appearances on loan to Rögle last season, recording four points and 28 PIMs before adding six points in 15 playoff games en route to a league finals appearances. He came to the AHL immediately after his season in Sweden ended, notching seven points and a -2 rating in 16 games for Texas.
Bichsel directly replacing Dumba in the lineup would mean playing on his off-side. It would mean the same for veteran Brendan Smith, Dallas’ other option to enter the lineup for Dumba, although the 35-year-old does have a decent amount of experience playing on the right side despite behind a left shot.
The Stars previously had two open spots on the active roster and are now down to one. Bichsel’s recall leaves them with $1.24MM in current cap space, per PuckPedia.
Central Notes: Stars, Dumba, Gustafsson, Martinez
The long-term injury to Stars center Tyler Seguin has many believing that the Stars will be very aggressive on the trade market. However, Daily Faceoff’s Jeff Marek wonders if they might wait until after the 4 Nations Face-Off in February to make any big splash on the trade front. For starters, that would allow them to bank more in-season cap space but it would also allow them to hedge their bets in case goaltender Jake Oettinger was injured in the event. Marek adds that among the areas that GM Jim Nill will be targeting between now and the March 7th deadline is getting tougher towards the bottom end of their forward group.
More from the Central Division:
- Still with Dallas, defenseman Matt Dumba didn’t take part in practice today, per Brian Rea of Victory+ (Twitter link). Head coach Peter DeBoer indicated the blueliner will be re-assessed as a precautionary measure. It hasn’t been a great year for the 30-year-old as he has been limited to just one assist in 19 games so far while logging 15:33 per game, his lowest ATOI since his first NHL action back in 2013-14. That’s not a great return on a $3.75MM price tag that runs through next season.
- Jets head coach Scott Arniel told reporters including Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Free Press (Twitter link) that center David Gustafsson is in concussion protocol. The 24-year-old was injured in a fight against Boston on Tuesday. Gustafsson has been limited to just three games this season where he has yet to record a point. He’ll now be waiting at least a little while to add to that games played total.
- After missing time with an upper-body injury earlier this season, Blackhawks defenseman Alec Martinez is dealing with a recurrence of that injury, causing him to leave practice early today, relays Mark Lazerus of The Athletic (Twitter link). The 37-year-old has been limited to just 15 games in his first season with Chicago and has four points while averaging a little over 20 minutes a night, an ATOI mark he last reached in 2020-21 with Vegas.
Stars Activate Matt Dumba From Injured Reserve
The Stars will have defenseman Mathew Dumba‘s services again starting tonight against the Sabres. He’s been activated from injured reserve and will dress in Buffalo, relays the team’s Mike Heika.
Dumba has skated less than a half-hour’s worth of game action this season. After signing a two-year, $7.5MM deal to join the Stars in free agency over the summer, he sustained a lower-body injury in just his second game of the year against the Islanders on Oct. 12. It’s an awfully quick turnaround time for the injury, which was initially feared to require surgery and had him downgraded from day-to-day to week-to-week. All in all, the 30-year-old only misses about a week and a half and four games’ worth of action.
Also returning to the ice against the Sabres tonight are forwards Tyler Seguin and Sam Steel. Neither was on IR, but Dallas returning Matěj Blümel to the minors over the weekend was still a good indication they’d be back in the fold. Seguin had a lower-body injury that had kept him out for three straight, while Steel missed just one contest with an undisclosed injury.
The Stars are looking to get Dumba back on track after back-to-back underwhelming seasons. The former top-four fixture with the Wild was let go in the 2023 offseason and signed with the Coyotes, where he struggled to the tune of 10 points and a -13 rating in 58 games before being flipped to the Lightning at the trade deadline. He was a non-factor in a bottom-four role in Tampa before signing his multi-year deal with Dallas a few months ago.
In a small sample, early signs weren’t promising. The right-shot defender logged top-pairing minutes alongside Miro Heiskanen, but the duo struggled to control play with an xGF% of just 33.3, per MoneyPuck. Dumba was held off the scoresheet in his brief stint in the lineup and logged three giveaways, but he did end up with a +2 rating and four hits.
The Stars will go back to the Heiskanen-Dumba experiment tonight, per Robert Tiffin of D Magazine. How long it remains past Tuesday’s contest remains to be seen.
Stars Place Matt Dumba On IR, Recall Matej Blumel
The Dallas Stars have placed defenseman Mathew Dumba on injured reserve and, in a corresponding move, recalled forward Matej Blumel from the AHL. Dumba has missed Dallas’ last two games with a lower-body injury that previously carried a week-to-week designation. An IR designation will now force him out for at least one week, though his injury isn’t expected to require surgery.
Dumba signed a two-year, $7.5MM contract with Dallas this summer. He only managed one full game with the Stars before suffering his injury six minutes into game two. Dumba recorded two penalties, two blocks, and no scoring in his sole Stars appearance.
Dallas stands as Dumba’s fourth team in just the last two years – moving from Minnesota to Arizona on a one-year deal signed in the summer of 2023, then getting traded to Tampa Bay at last season’s Trade Deadline. He hasn’t found much success with any of the previous three clubs, totaling just 12 points in 76 games last season. That mark stands as a career-low for Dumba, narrowly beating out his previous career-low of 14 points, set in 79 games during his final season in Minnesota. Dallas stood as a chance for Dumba to get back on the path, and maybe even rediscover the 50-point upside he flaunted in 2017-18 – but he’ll now first have to overcome the hurdle of an extended injury. Dumba recorded 18:28 in ice time in his Stars debut. Dallas has rotated minutes between Nils Lundkvist and Ilya Lyubushkin in Dumba’s absence.
Meanwhile, Blumel could receive another chance at earning routine NHL minutes. He played in the first six games of his NHL career in 2022-23, netting one goal and a -2 to go along with the 19 goals and 44 points he managed in 58 AHL games. Blumel spent the entirety of last season in the minor leagues, ramping up his production to 62 points, split evenly, in 72 games. That mark ranked him first on the Texas Stars in goals and second in total points. Blumel sits with one goal and two penalties through two AHL games this season. He’ll likely serve as bottom-six depth as Dallas bears through day-to-day injuries to both Tyler Seguin and Sam Steel.