Tyler Seguin’s road back from knee surgery has turned into the toughest rehab of his career, and the Dallas Stars center didn’t hide that when he finally spoke publicly about it Tuesday.
Speaking at the Dallas Stars Foundation’s annual Drive Fore the Kids golf tournament in Carrollton, Texas, Seguin said the ACL recovery has tested him in a way nothing else has.
“I never thought I’d get slapped in the face with something this different than the rest,” Seguin said. “I thought a lot of things were hard, and then this one’s been probably the most challenging.”
It was his first public comment on the knee since exit interviews on May 4.
Seguin has been out since Dec. 2, 2025, when Rangers defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov landed on his right knee in the first period of a 3-2 overtime loss at the New York Rangers. Dr.
Dan Cooper operated in Dallas two weeks later, on Dec. 16.
Before the injury, Seguin was producing at a steady clip for Dallas. He had 7 goals, 10 assists and 17 points in 27 games, along with a plus-10 rating, a 53.6% mark on faceoffs and 16:40 of ice time per night. Stars general manager Jim Nill said last week on NHL Network that Seguin had been doing a little bit of everything.
“He was a big loss for us,” Nill told NHL Network last week. “When we lost him on the (second) of December, he was like our third leading scorer (17 points in 27 games).
… His game had really matured. He’s good on draws, he can score.
He was killing penalties for us.”
The rehab hasn’t followed a simple script, either. Seguin said he’s compared notes with a few other NHL players who have torn an ACL, but each case has looked different.
“It’s special where I feel like if I hear someone has had an ACL they’re going through, I can sit down with them and talk for half an hour, just because I think it’s more selective, especially in our sport,” Seguin said. “I don’t think you’re going to know until you have to go through it.
I don’t think you can explain it to anybody, what the process is of everything involved. Happy to know that I’m doing better.”
A setback in the middle of June knocked him off the ice and forced him to stop skating, though he said the trend has been better since then.
“You know, just the length of it and the different ups and downs, it’s been challenging for sure, but there’s been a good support system,” Seguin explained. “Really, whatever happens, I know how hard I’ve worked and what I’ve put into it, and I’m proud of that part.”
This is hardly the first major injury chapter in Seguin’s career. He tore his labrum during Dallas’ run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2020 and had right hip arthroscopy and labral repair on Nov. 2, 2020, then missed all but three games of the 2020-21 season.
More recently, he had surgery on the other hip on Dec. 5, 2024 to repair a left femoroacetabular impingement and hip labrum. That season, he posted 9 goals, 12 assists and 21 points in 20 games, finished plus-15, returned for the regular-season finale and then played all 18 playoff games with 4 goals and 4 assists.
Across the last two regular seasons, Seguin has appeared in 47 games.
Drafted second overall by the Boston Bruins in 2010, Seguin has built a long NHL résumé: 367 goals, 459 assists and 826 points in 1,016 regular-season games, plus 29 goals, 50 assists and 79 points in 151 playoff games.
He’s also entering a significant stretch contractually. Seguin is in the final year of the eight-year, $78.8 million deal he signed in 2018, a contract with a $9.85 million cap hit. TSN listed him among nine pending unrestricted free agents on the roster.
Dallas is coming off a 50-20-12 season that produced 112 points and a second-place finish in the Central Division before the Minnesota Wild knocked the Stars out in six games in the first round.
Training camp opens Sept. 17 at Comerica Center in Frisco. The preseason starts Sept. 19 at St.
Louis, with a 6 p.m. CT puck drop, and the regular season opens Oct. 2 when the Stars host the St.
Louis Blues at American Airlines Center at 8 p.m. CT on TNT.
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Tyler Seguins Recovery Leaves One Big Question For Stars Fans
Tyler Seguin is back on the ice and back in the familiar grind of a comeback, skating again after the torn ACL that interrupted his season and sent the Stars into waiting mode. For a veteran who has been through plenty over the years, the return to skating is an encouraging marker, the kind that suggests the rehab is moving forward and the long road back is starting to feel a little more like hockey and a little less like a medical timeline.
The bigger issue for Dallas is the same one that hangs over every late-stage recovery: when, exactly, will Seguin be ready to play again? He talked about the difficulty of the process, and the Stars will keep watching each step closely as the regular season approaches. Even with progress on the ice, there is still uncertainty around his status for the opener, which leaves one of the teams most important forwards in the gray area between recovery and return. [Read more 🡒]
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The bigger takeaway is what comes next. Capobianco is under contract for two more years at a manageable cap hit, and his offensive track record in the AHL helped convince the Stars to keep him in the fold. With more openings on the blue line now, Dallas appears ready to ask him to shoulder a larger role in 2026-27, even if the exact shape of that job is still being sorted out. [Read more 🡒]