The Dallas Stars made moves this week that seemed to signal a desire to free up cap space to re-sign their priority unrestricted free agents: defenseman Chris Tanev and forward Matt Duchene. They bought out the last year of 39-year-old defenseman Ryan Suter’s contract, freeing up about $1.3 million in cap space this season to give them some financial wiggle room.
It appears that may not have been enough to get Tanev back into the fold for the coming season, though.
The Stars traded his rights to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday during the second day of the NHL draft, a couple of days before free agency opens on July 1st. They got a 2026 7th round draft pick and an AHL forward, Max Ellis, in exchange for the rights to negotiate with the pending free agent.
Reading the tea leaves of what’s being discussed by various media members, it appears the sticking point for Tanev might have been contract term.
There’s also plenty of raises due in the coming years to keep the new core of the Stars together. Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnston, Logan Stankoven, Thomas Harley, Jake Oettinger — all will be looking for pay bumps in the coming seasons and, if they perform how they have been of late, that’s going to eat a lot of future cap space even with the salary cap ceiling rising in the future. You don’t want to be handcuffed with a potential albatross contract while negotiating all of that, especially if it could come at the sacrifice of a young, homegrown talent.
Still, this leaves a lot of questions about who, exactly, Dallas might be looking towards to upgrade the defense for next season. Right now, they have two guys under contract on the blueline: Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell (who, funnily enough, is entering the last year of his $5.8 million contract). Thomas Harley is a restricted free agent and will get a deal done later in the summer after free agency, a timing that most teams take in their approach to RFA negotiations.
Other RFA defenseman Nils Lundkvist’s status is unclear here, too. Stars coach Pete DeBoer seemed to lose trust in the young blueliner over the course of last season, so these moves either indicate he’s going to be forced into being an every day option the coaches will have to play going forward or he gets packaged into a deal to clear some additional cap space for the Stars to make an upgrade on the backend via free agency signing or trade.
You also have to wonder if Lian Bichsel, the first round draft pick two summers ago that started the year in the AHL and then moved back to Europe to play in the SEL, is NHL ready after a surprisingly deep playoff run this spring. These moves could open the door to him making the Dallas roster out of training camp this summer, even without major acquisitions occurring in free agency or trade.
As it stands, this is that weird part of the offseason where the full picture of these moves isn’t clear yet. What is clear is that Dallas seems primed to be active in whatever avenue opens for them to make changes to the blueline.
You’ll just have to practice Stars general manager Jim Nill’s favorite word — patience — to see how it all comes together over the course of the next week or so.