The Dallas Stars have finally reached a short-term resolution with Jason Robertson, but the bigger questions around the winger are still hanging in the air.
Robertson, a restricted free agent, has agreed to a one-year contract for next season with a $12 million cap hit. That gets the sides through the coming year, but not much further.
When the deal runs out on June 30, Robertson will be an unrestricted free agent. He’ll be eligible to sign an extension starting January 1, which means the trade and contract chatter figures to pick up again then, especially if Dallas is having a tough season.
The negotiations between the Stars and Robertson had dragged on long enough that Dallas even had a trade lined up with Seattle before it collapsed when Robertson turned down a long-term deal with the Kraken. That reported offer would have paid him $15 million a season.
For now, Dallas has bought itself a little time, but it comes with a cap problem. With Robertson back under contract, the Stars are now a bit more than $1 million over the salary cap.
The drawn-out talks also played a role in Dallas moving young forward Mavrik Bourque to Nashville earlier this month. Bourque has since signed a five-year deal with a $5.5 million AAV.
The timing matters here, too. Robertson’s arbitration hearing was scheduled for July 25, so this agreement gives both sides more runway to keep working toward something longer term.
Elsewhere around the league, the Mammoth locked up one of their top defensemen on an eight-year, $82.25 million contract. That deal stands out even more with the league’s term limits changing soon; starting in September, the maximum will drop to seven years for re-signing with the same team and six years for players joining a new one.
In Columbus, Jet Greaves and the Blue Jackets are still far apart on next season’s money. The club filed at $2.8 million, while Greaves came in at $7.5 million, leaving a $4.7 million gap before Thursday’s arbitration hearing. There’s still time to settle before the hearing, but once it begins, the arbitrator has to pick one of the two numbers.
Sean McIndoe also dug into a fun draft-day exercise, trying to build the best lineup of players traded for first-round picks by draft year. His answer was 2026, which makes sense given how often first-rounders were flying around in recent seasons. The Lightning had one player on that roster: Yanni Gourde.
The Rangers are adding two familiar names to their player development side. Jonathan Quick, who recently retired, is joining the front office as director of goaltending development, and Derick Brassard will work as a player development assistant.
And the NHL is stepping in on the broadcast side. With FanDuel Sports Network gone, several teams were left without regional TV deals, so the league will provide centralized production this year for the Hurricanes, Blue Jackets, Wild, and Blues. Those clubs will still need to secure cable or over-the-air distribution, along with streaming options.
In Other News...
Andrei Vasilevskiy Is On The Verge Of Another Historic Jump
Andrei Vasilevskiy keeps stacking up the kind of numbers that usually belong to a franchises history book, not its present tense. The Lightning goalie is closing in on 600 regular-season games, a benchmark that would put him among a small group of NHL netminders, and he is also creeping toward 19,000 shots faced, another marker that speaks to both durability and the workload he has carried for Tampa Bay over the years.
The bigger picture is even more striking because those milestones are arriving while the rest of the league keeps shifting around him, from coaching changes to roster projections and expansion chatter. For the Lightning, though, the focus stays on Vasilevskiy and the next rung on the ladder, with one more major career number now seemingly within reach before long. [Read more 🡒]