In this episode of Stargazing, Wes and Mark talk about the synergy between the net and the blueline, the importance of staying healthy (and how much that’s worth paying for), the factors that stats can’t seem to capture, the Him vs. Dog of it all, and ever so much more.

Really, who cares about save percentage? We’re Stargazing, and we’d rather get credit for the wins. Let’s talk about it in the comments. And please give us a rate, review, or share wherever you get your podcasts.

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In this episode of Stargazing, Wes and Mark discuss who can play up, who can get called up, who has the chemistry to play with Mikko Rantanen, what the coaching staff must do to maximize the roster, what might happen if Wyatt Johnston becomes as dominant at 5-on-5 as he is on the power play…and so very much more.

Is Rémi Poirier ready for the big time? We’re Stargazing, and we’re not gonna be the ones to bet against it.

Bonus question: What do you want to see from Glen Gulutzan and his staff in 2026-27? Let’s talk about it in the comments. And please give us a rate, review, or share wherever you get your podcasts.

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So do we panic now that Plan A is dusted? Or is a Jim Nill Plan B good enough to keep the Stars rolling?

In this episode of Stargazing, Wes and Mark discuss the battle to keep Robo (and who has a legitimate chance of taking him away), Jamie Benn’s new deal, a show-me season for Thomas Harley, what the team needs from Mikko Rantanen, separating fact from fiction in the Stars’ salary cap situation…and ever so much more.

So is Joel Kiviranta the good-luck charm we all need to ensure everything will be OK? We’re Stargazing, and we’re not dismissing the prospect out of hand.

Bonus question: Who are you watching among the Stars’ new NHL Draft picks? Let’s talk about it in the comments. And please give us a rate, review, or share wherever you get your podcasts.

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Here are some of the top stories to keep an eye on for today:

Jason Robertson

The 1st-NHL All Star was shopped around before the NHL Draft, vetoing at least two different trades to the Seattle Kraken and St. Louis Blues respectively. Per reports, Robertson’s preference is to stay in Dallas, but he does not want to budge under $14M per season, whereas Dallas does not want to budge over $12-12.5M per season.

An offer sheet is possible, but at this point, there’s a decent chance Robertson ends up staying in Dallas. The question then becomes for how long? Do the two sides split down the middle(ish) and sign a long term deal? Or do they head to arbitration and end up with a one year deal, walking Robertson right to UFA? Given the Stars’ salary crunch for this year specifically, that path certainly has an appeal… if you could magically be assured Robertson would stay in Dallas, rather than losing him for nothing (or trading him at the deadline in a deal very reminiscent of Mikko Rantanen).

Mavrik Bourque

The Stars’ other former first round forward who’s a pending RFA, Bourque is a much more realistic offer sheet target — he could easily be given a contract too large for Dallas to match (without losing Robertson) while only giving up a small asset in return, likely a second round pick. And per reports, teams are prepared to approach Bourque and try and sign him away.

Of course, a player has to be willing to sign an offer sheet for it to be any threat. There’s a chance that Bourque only ways to stay in Dallas, perhaps even taking a bit of a discount on a bridge deal to help make the money work for other pieces before cashing in with Dallas a year or two from now. But with no resolution to the Robertson situation, committing to any specific cap hit just hurts the Stars flexibility, which might now come back to bite them if he is interested in getting a bigger payday.

Update: The Dallas Stars have traded Mavrik Bourque and Ilya Lybushkin to the Nashville Predators for the Predators’ 2027 2nd and the Golden Knights’ 2028 3rd.

Thomas Harley

News broke last night that Zack Werenski nixed a trade to Dallas in a package that would have revolved around Thomas Harley. There seem to be conflicting reports about why Werenski didn’t waive his NMC (some say he prefers to stay East, others that he only wants Toronto or Tampa Bay, others that he’s vetoing all trades), but by all accounts it’s reasonable to assume it won’t happen.

Unfortunately, the fallout from the news breaking can’t be good for Harley. Hockey is a tough business, but it has to be rough to be starting a new, 8 year mega-extension and learning that your team just tried to trade you after a down year, even if it was for the reigning Norris Trophy winner. No one can know for sure how Harley will end up taking the news, but hockey players are humans too, and this kind of stuff affects them.

Meanwhile the vetoed trade also shows that Jim Nill is willing to move Harley, one of the team’s only high salary players without trade protection, if the price is right. I’m not sure there’s a different realistic trade target that Dallas would view is worth shipping out Harley for — you would think it would have to be a top pairing defenseman — but it’s something to keep an eye on.

The Other Guys

Jamie Benn is hitting free agency, although the expectation has so far been that he will return to Dallas on a similar one-year deal as with last season. But again, any kind of signing shrinks the Stars’ cap and makes their RFA situation with Robertson and Bourque less flexible. Given that, even if Benn didn’t return to Dallas, he’s likely making the same, inexpensive contract anywhere, perhaps he’s fine with not signing right away and playing the waiting game for the Stars’ sake.

Meanwhile even if Robertson comes down to meet the Stars’ ask, they will need to clear some other cap space to make it work. Ilya Lybushkin has been long expected to be traded away to make room (Update: and now has been), but the Stars might also need to ship out Radek Faksa and/or Sam Steel to make the money work.

What’s going to happen? No one knows. That’s what makes the NHL offseason so much fun… and also so nauseating at the same time.

Discuss the moves here, and check DBD for reports on what happens throughout the week to come.

In this episode of Stargazing, Wes and Mark examined the takeaways from the Stars’ all-too-short run. And along with the obvious issues (injuries, penalties, name it), they found some surprisingly positive evidence for the future (and you may or may not be surprised at how much of it probably ties into the promotion of Neil Graham).

So are you rooting for the asteroid, or the giant truck? We’re Stargazing, and we’re keeping our options open.

Bonus question: What will you look for in the next NHL Draft? Let’s talk about it in the comments. And please give us a rate, review, or share wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Stargazing. We love you.

Granted, it sure didn’t look like they would at first — that first period might have been some of the most depressing, uninspiring hockey I’ve seen since *checks notes* Tuesday. But in the second, we had a glimpse of hope as penalties started to get called, with Dallas once again shutting down the Minnesota Wild power play while converting on their own. After all, that’s the only way Dallas was going to win, right?

Well that’s when they really got us — Mavrik Bourque broke the Stars’ 250 year 5-on-5 scoring drought, able to punish Jesper Wallstedt in one of the few times he’s gotten out of position this series. Dallas had the lead, Jake Oettinger was holding down the fort on his end, and given how frequent penalties had been this series and referees’ tendencies to “keep things even,” you had to figure there was at least one more Stars power play in the future.

But as anyone who has seen Ted Lasso would tell you, it’s the hope that kills you. It wasn’t even a minute of game time later that Vladamir Tarasenko evened things back up, and you could feel the momentum just deflate. To loosely paraphrase Ralph Strangis, whenever the Stars scored, there was a feeling of relief — when the Wild scored, it was just another goal to get excited about.

The nail in the coffin didn’t come until the third, however, when Quinn Hughes scored his second of the night by banking it in off of Ilya Lybushkin’s skate. Usually, you would read that and think it was just an unlucky break and curse the hockey gods. But when you watch it again (viewer discretion advised), it becomes very clear that Hughes, probably the best defenseman in the world not named Cale Makar, was very intentionally trying to bank it in that way, assuming one of his teammates wasn’t able to free up their stick at the last minute to tip it instead. That won’t work every time, but as they say, it only has to work once.

Like I said though, the Stars at least went down swinging, including pulling Oettinger for the extra skater with several minutes still on the clock (which, given their 5-on-5 struggles, was not surprising in the least). But in a series where their only edge was being able to score with the man advantage, they weren’t able to pony up when it counted, which means their season is done before the third round for the first time in four years.

So… what went wrong? Really, it all starts and ends with the constantly referenced 5-on-5 woes. Dom Luszczyszyn pointed out that the Stars actually had the expected goals edge in the series heading into Game 6, they just couldn’t finish. But even if you do your best to ignore the actual goals scored, it’s hard thinking of many times where it actually felt like Dallas had the edge in any way, shape or form at even strength, and certainly not over the length of the series.

That lack of scoring would be concerning for any team for any given year. But this is not just any team, and its not just any year — the Stars have had scoring dry up on them in the playoffs for the last four playoff runs¹, and lifeless showings in what turns out to their final home playoff game of the year (often even the penultimate as well) have become common place. It just turns out it came much, much earlier this year than in the past. That’s not indicative of a coaching issue², but seemingly of the players and team as a whole.

Now, to be clear, I’m not about to get on some “culture” soapbox — culture is a very real thing when it comes to sports, and a losing one will sink you, but that’s not an area of concern for one of the NHL’s most successful franchises (non-Stanley Cup winning category) over the past eight years or so. Rather its more likely to do with the type of players and what they can and cannot do. For example, the Stars have only two defensemen that can consistently transition out of the defensive zone, and sometimes they end up paired together (like last night). Hell, one of them, Miro Heiskanen, was responsible for two turnovers when trying to pass out the puck in Game 6³, one of which forced Jake Oettinger to bail his team out and the other of which gave Hughes the series-winner.

Or, we could talk about the acquisitions since last postseason. Sure, Radek Faksa was arguably the MVP of Game 3, but he wasn’t exactly the type of player you bring on board when your biggest issue seems to be a lack of scoring at the end of playoff runs. Meanwhile trade deadline acquisitions Michael Bunting and Tyler Myers weren’t exactly difference makers — Bunting was a (healthy?) scratch until Game 6, which was coincidentally the same game Myers was scratched even though the Stars were already down a defensemen.

Speaking of which, yes, I know, I know: the injuries. The Stars were missing Roope Hintz all series long, and Tyler Seguin for most of the season. Nils Lundkvist got a skate to face mid-series and didn’t return. Mikko Rantanen clearly never got back to 100% after being injured at the Olympics. The excuses write themselves. But that’s what they are: excuses. The Wild also had their fair share of injuries, as does pretty much every team come playoff time. Guess what? They powered through and overcame them.

And at the risk of sounding overtly callous, let’s be honest for a moment here: Lundkvist didn’t even play more than a game (if that) over the last three playoff runs, so regardless of his strides forward this season, it’s not as if he was some “can’t lose” player in the lineup. And as for Hintz and Seguin, it’s the unfortunate reality that you kind of have to expect they will be injured come playoff time, or at least not playing 100%, which is a damn shame given how talented of players they are and how their absence was sorely felt.

But even then, do we really feel like having one of Hintz or Seguin was the difference this series? That one of them, or perhaps a fully healthy Rantanen (who still managed to score more than a point-per-game, mind you), would have suddenly solved the Stars even-strength struggles and tipped things in the Stars’ favor? At best, I think you could argue that maybe they help get you that overtime goal in Game 4, which completely changes the series, and/or they help give you a bump at the right time in Game 6. Truth is, even if they managed to eek our a series win, this still would have looked like a team that was going to be outmatched by the Colorado Avalanche in round two.

Perhaps that’s where my only solace comes in this playoff run — at the end of the day, I never really thought “this was the year,” which I can honestly say I’ve felt in each of the previous three runs (especially 2024), long before they actually went on said runs. Heck, I was team “maybe don’t do anything at the deadline” because I wasn’t sure they would be able to move the needle at all given their available assets, and look at that, I (sadly) feel pretty vindicated in that opinion right now.

That’s not to say that it’s all doomerism or that the sky is falling. This is still a very talented hockey team, and they will continue to be a Stanley Cup Contender going forward. The key for Jim Nill and Glen Gulutzan, however, will be how to make them into a true Stanley Cup Favorite, a la the Colorado Avalanche. Because you can easily argue the Stars were that just a year or so ago. But this year? I don’t think so.

• Growing up as a Stars fan whose oldest childhood memories of any kind date back to 2000, I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs in Dallas. I remember the consistent playoff years under Dave Tippett that never went the distance. I remember the dark days of bankruptcy and a five-year playoff drought, which was a part of a seven year stretch in which Dallas was always right on the playoff bubble, always securing a double digit first round draft pick that they’d proceed to almost always whiff on. I remember the roller coaster under Lindy Ruff from year to year, and the aforementioned eight years of very successful hockey after the failed Hitchcock 2.0 experiment.

But if there was one constant throughout most of that time, it was that the Stars just didn’t have a goal scorer. I’m not talking about players who can put the puck in the net — I mean someone whose identity is seemingly revolved around that, the kind of guy you expect to see in the Rocket Richard race every year. Jamie Benn scored 41 goals in 2015-16, and Tyler Seguin 40 goals in 2017-18, but they never reached those numbers again. You know who the team’s last 40+ goal scorer before that was? Mike Modano when he scored 50 in 1993-94, the first season in Dallas Stars history.

Plenty of players would score more than 30, and more than a few times someone would manage 39, but almost never 40. And heck, even the Stars leading scorers didn’t seem to be too terribly consistent — over the years, we’ve seen team leaders like Michael Ryder(!), Jaromir Jagr despite being traded mid-season(!!), and Dennis Gurianov who (in an admittedly Covid-shortened season) led the team with just twenty goals(!!!). No matter the time, whether through trade, free agency, or the draft, the Stars could just never get a guy whose purpose in life was to put pucks in the net.

And then along came Jason Robertson.

Robertson, who scored a respectable 17 goals in his 51-game rookie season (27 goal pace) who then scored 41 in his sophomore season and 46 in his third. Robertson, who took a step back with just 29 goals in 2023-24 before increasing it to 35 the next and almost tying a career high with 45 this year. Robertson, who has as many 40+ goal seasons than the reset of the Dallas Stars franchise combined after that first season in Dallas (thanks, Wyatt Johnston).

In a series where the Stars struggled to score, Jason Robertson was Mr. Automatic, scoring in each of the first five games for a total of 8 points, only failing to get on the scoresheet last night in Game 6. He is the exact kind of goal scorer the Stars have never truly had in Dallas, and you know what the best part is? Despite the narrative, scoring isn’t all he does, as even his defensive game is severely underrated. Just look back to last night when he managed to race with and out-muscle Kirill Kaprizov when the Wild super star looked all but guaranteed to score the (first) empty netter and end the Stars’ season (a bit earlier than Matt Boldy did).

Robertson is everything the Stars could ask for and more… and yet here we are, more than a year into the “should Dallas trade Robertson” discourse. Needless to say, I’ve always been flabbergasted by that line of thinking, even if the reasoning is sound. This is not just some top line player — this is Robertson, the player who scores on a team that has always lacked for consistent goal scoring (more so than ever in recent years), in addition to bringing other things to the table and playing a position or relative weakness in the Stars’ lineup. He’s not just a player you trade and then think you’ll end up better off, extra cap space for other players be damned.

It’s not Robertson’s fault that the Stars have handed out NMCs to pretty much every other top dollar player sans Wyatt Johnston and Thomas Harley, and thus is the most moveable outside of Johnston (which would be equally laughable if not more so). You pay the man, figure it out, and move on. If this was going to be point of concern, then you don’t make the Mikko Ranatnen trade and extension, or you don’t re-sign Matt Duchene for four years with a NMC, or Esa Lindell for longer with a NTC. Not commenting on any of those extensions individually, mind you, more so that you made those moves knowing they might hurt later because you wanted to win now. And that’s the exact same logic in why there should be no question as to keeping Robertson long term.

• Now, the Stars could use cap space, and the aforementioned NMCs for any player making more than a buck-fifty makes that rather hard. This is more so a topic for the offseason, but I think there are some options. Tyler Seguin has just one year left on his contract, which doesn’t help you next season but will provide some big relief after that. Not to mention that we don’t really know the extent of Seguin’s injury or recovery — again, given his history, there might be a better than not chance he ends up on LTIR again next year at some point.

In the same injury-plagued vein, you could stop and take a look at Roope Hintz. It’s never going to happen, because Hintz is never going to waive his NMC (and I’m not sure Jim Nill would ever ask him to, given how loyal he is to a fault), but on paper… if you had to choose one of your top end players with a big cap hit to offload, that player would be Hintz, not Robertson. This is not to say I don’t love Hintz (or Seguin), or that I feel like they aren’t/can’t be true difference makers when healthy… but that’s a big emphasis on “when healthy.”

Finally, and forgive me for beating a dead horse here, the Stars could help their salary cap crunch concerns by simply finding better players to round out the bottom of the lineup players. Like I said, great Game 3 from Radek Faksa, but as a whole, I’m not sure he’s brought anything to the table that Dallas didn’t already have internal solutions for. In contrast, you have players like Justin Hryckowian who made a big impact when given a chance, and I liked what we saw from Arttu Hyry in his limited games as well. Heck, the Stars’ biggest weakness, the defense (still), at least has some solid players for cheap, including the aforementioned Lundkvist who may very well turn out to be a solid second paring guy yet.

• On the subject of changes to the roster, this doesn’t exactly help with the salary cap, but I do wonder if we’ve seen Jamie Benn’s last game as a Dallas Star. He wasn’t just a non-factor this series — he was an active detriment to the team. Zero points, -7, and four very, very stupid penalties (not to mention other stuff that probably should have gotten called, but didn’t). Honestly, if he wasn’t the captain/a respected “veteran presence,” he probably would have been healthy scratched multiple times. And it’s not like this is a new problem — he was just as detrimental last postseason (3 points, -11, 26(!) PIM across 18 games), and his regular season was his worst scoring-wise since 2019-20.

And, of course, there’s the giant ‘C’ shaped elephant in the room. I will always defend Benn when it comes to his captaincy given how much players love him in that role, which is all that matters. But if you’ve had four straight postseasons where your team seems to run out of gas/go through the motions/falter at home at the very end, you’ve already made the coaching change, and you’re tight pressed for roster solutions outside of a (probably ill-advised) massive trade of a top player… having a new voice leading the locker room might be a card worth playing. And if you’re doing that, there’s no way you’re keeping Benn around, partially because of the potential awkwardness but also the aforementioned lack of production/active harm to the team when it matters most.

I know Jim Nill has said before that Benn will be around as long as he wants, and as I mentioned, Nill is loyal to a fault. But he’s also a businessman, and so is his boss/franchise owner. I could see (and even argued for) the case for bringing Benn back for this season on a cheap one-year deal. I just can’t justify it again.

• Finally, Jake Oettinger was not the better goalie this series — Jesper Wallstedt takes that honors. But Wallstedt, in addition to just being lights out fantastic, also had much stronger support from his team (especially at even strength), and as a whole wasn’t challenged as much as Oettinger I feel like. That’s not to say Oettinger is blameless, and there are certainly goals he would like back (even outside of Game 1)… but after a very, very rough regular season that led some people (who shall remain nameless 😛 ) to pine for Casey DeSmith as a possible playoff starter, I’m not sure anyone would argue that Oettinger didn’t leave everything on the table and give Dallas enough to win with had they just scored.

And before you turn around and say “well if he was just elite/near-perfect he could have stolen Dallas the games they needed to survive”… Linus Ullmark (who also had a rough/down year) had a .932 SV% this postseason for the Ottawa Senators. You know how many games Ottawa won? Zero. Even near-perfection in net can’t always bail you out against really good hockey teams.

1. They only scored, on average, two goals-per-game in 2022 against the Calgary Flames, but only two of those game on the power play, and overall the vibes felt much more like a tightly contested, low-scoring series compared to the one-sided scoring collapses we’ve seen since. ↩︎
2. That’s not to absolve Glen Gulutzan and his coaching staff of any of the team’s struggles, mind you. If your team consistently has scoring dry up in the postseason and you bring on board a coach from the team who eliminated you twice and most definitely has not ever had that problem, you kind of expect that problem to get fixed, or at the very least get better. If anything, things seemed even worse this year, power play aside. ↩︎
3. In Heiskanen’s defense, however, the puck both times seemed to go just past a forward who was trying to come to a stop and extend their stick out to stop it, so its hard to tell if those were cases of Heiskanen missing the mark or the forward not being ready for it. ↩︎

While it was not the immense struggle from game 1, there were shades of similarities. Dallas struggled to produce five-on-five play and let some unfortunate bounces turn into Minnesota scoring chances. Dallas has been in this position before, and has been able to pull off a win, and even go on to win the series. The Stars will try to replicate that as they head to Grand Casino Arena with their season on the line.

“We got a great group,” Jamie Benn said. “Like I said, we’ve been a great road team all year, so we’ll go up there and put in a hard 60 minutes, maybe more.”

Minnesota struck first when Mats Zuccarello, who missed the past three games after taking Tyler Myer’s elbow to his face, tapped in a rebound from Kirill Kaprizov’s shot. The play emerged after Myers’ attempt to clear his own zone was intercepted by Ryan Hartman.  

Five minutes later, Bobby Brink headed to the penalty box after slashing Thomas Harley, giving Dallas a chance to respond to the Wild’s early lead. The Stars had great puck movement on the power play and capitalized when Miro Heiskanen sent a wrist shot from the point past Jesper Wallstedt to tie things up. 

Over the next ten minutes, both teams had some quality chances, but nothing materialized until Minnesota went to the power play after Lian Bichsel got called for interference. Dallas began the power play strong, with a few important clears and big saves from Jake Oettinger, but eventually Matt Boldy poked the puck through. 

The Stars challenged the goal for goaltender interference and the officials sided with them. With 11 seconds remaining, Dallas kept the score at an even 1-1. 

The beginning of the second period saw a huge scoring opportunity for Dallas, when Wallstedt vacated the crease, but Mavrik Bourque could not control the puck in the mad scramble in front of the net.

After Joel Eriksson Ek tripped up Heiskanen, Dallas headed to another power play. In a big momentum stop, Minnesota managed to kill the Stars’ power play for the first time since game three. 

Dallas was every bit as resilient when Myers’ interference penalty sent the Wild on a power play of their own. Oettinger looked sharp as he gloved down Eriksson’s Ek final shot of the man advantage. The Stars continued that momentum and won a lot of puck battles, but eventually a bench minor for too many men on the ice sent them back on the penalty kill.

Boldly scored with 32 seconds remaining, and this time, it counted. Dallas headed into the third period down 2-1, with only 11 shots on goal. Minnesota recorded 25.  

“…You create opportunities for yourselves, as we talked about the last two days, and again, we thought we did create some opportunities for ourselves,” Head coach Glen Gulutzan said after the game. “Now we got to take that next step, and convert on some of them and hit the net on some of them, and create some of that residual — doesn’t go in and draws a penalty, you know, got to force them to defend a little bit…”

The third opened up with chances on both ends, but Minnesota ultimately pulled ahead. Michael McCarron collected a loose puck in Dallas’ zone and put it past Oettinger to give the Wild a 3-2 lead.

Dallas had a chance to respond soon after, when Oskar Bäck got tripped up by Jake Middleton, but could not convert. Wallstedt made some good saves, but the Stars also struggled to create quality chances.

Later, Jamie Benn and Ryan Hartman traded penalties, with the former going to the box for cross checking and the latter being sent away for unsportsmanlike conduct. The Stars emptied their net, but once again struggled. Dallas got a glimmer of hope when Jason Robertson put in a tough angle shot that bounced off of Jared Spurgeon, but with just three minutes left, could not come up with any more answers.

Kirill Kaprizov scored on Dallas’ empty net and put the final nail in the coffin. The Stars fell 4-2 and will head to Minnesota to take on the Wild on Thursday, with one team fighting to keep their season alive and the other fighting to advance to the second round.