Stars spend first day of free agency managing tight salary cap situation

Wednesday was a sobering reminder of just how challenging roster construction could be for the Stars in the season ahead.

A team with seven players under contract with AAVs of more than $8 million – and with an even bigger fish to sign in Jason Robertson – were sellers on the first day of free agency. Dallas traded away 24-year-old Mavrik Bourque rather than lose him to an offer sheet from another team. In addition, they moved defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin to create some cap space and watched Alexander Petrovic sign as a free agent with the Florida Panthers.

On the flip side, they made a sturdy addition to their forward depth by bringing back Joel Kiviranta (who played for Dallas from 2019-23) on a one-year contract worth $1 million.

And while signing Robertson to an eight-year deal somewhere between $12 million and $14 million AAV still is a possibility, the team doesn’t really have room to do much else.

So is that frustrating, Jim Nill?

“I don’t know if it’s frustration,” the Stars general manager said on Wednesday. “We come here every day trying to make the team better and improve the organization. The groundwork that is going on behind the scenes is never-ending. There are a lot of discussions, lots of talk. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. I think the message is we’re just trying to be as competitive of a team as we can be and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Dallas had been in talks to add players via trade before the start of free agency on Wednesday morning, but those trades didn’t work out. As a result, the team needed to trade Bourque or risk losing him to another team’s offer sheet. So they sent him and Lyubushkin to Nashville for a second and third round draft pick.

Bourque and Logan Stankoven were drafted by the Stars and were award-winning forwards in the AHL in 2024. Stankoven was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes to get Mikko Rantanen and then helped Carolina win the Stanley Cup this year. Bourque had a great season, scoring 20 goals and taking a big step at the NHL level for Dallas.

Now, both are gone.

“It’s what we thought was best for our organization – we needed to be cap compliant, we wanted to get the most assets for him, so it was probably a mix of both and probably the best situation for us,” Nill said.

Stankoven signed an eight-year deal with an AAV of $6 million with Carolina, so Bourque should be getting a big boost from the $950,000 he made last season.

Robertson is another one of the homegrown goal-scorers and maybe the team’s top success story. He tallied 45 goals among 96 points in 82 games last season and was named First Team All-Star by the NHL. He is a restricted free agent, but he would like a new contract extension that is eight years with an AAV somewhere between $12 and $15 million. The Stars have been exploring trade options, but they haven’t worked out, and Nill said again on Wednesday that Dallas would like to re-sign Robertson.

If they do, they might not be able to afford anything else this season. That’s one reason the team traded Bourque and Lyubushkin. That’s one reason they have re-signed Arttu Hyry ($900K) and Kyle Capobianco ($875K) to new deals. It’s one reason Nill has had to wait to re-sign captain Jamie Benn.

“You can’t fit everyone in,” Nill said. “You get the calculator out and the numbers don’t add up. When you get the sum of a lot of good players, the numbers have to add up and you have tough decisions.”

Rantanen signed an eight-year contract extension at $12 million. Thomas Harley signed an eight-year deal at $10.587 million that starts this season. Miro Heiskanen and Roope Hintz each make $8.45 million. Wyatt Johnston makes $8.4 million. Jake Oettinger makes $8.25 million. Tyler Seguin is entering the final year of a deal that averages $9.85 million.

Seguin’s deal will come off the books next season and the cap is supposed to go up from $104 million to $113.5 next season, so the Stars do have room in the future. Right now, however, things are very tight.

“We’re going to be tight,” Nill said. “We’ve got some very good players and they deserve to be paid. We’re trying to make this fit the best we can, but these are hard decisions. When we talk to the players, we say we want to keep the band together and if everyone can work together, we’ll see if we can make it work.”

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.