Alex Petrovic and Kyle Capobianco Were There When Dallas Needed Them

A blue line is made up of more than six players

Great news! It’s time for some more fake player grades. Today, we’re talking about two more players who are pending unrestricted free agents: Alex Petrovic and Kyle Capobianco.

Either or both of the two veteran blueliners could be brought back to Dallas next season, but given the salary cap situation after a presumptive Jason Robertson re-signing, such a move would likely entail putting players like Capobianco and/or Petrovic through waivers before the start of the season. So, it’s anyone’s guess what the players and team will decide to do by July 1, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For now, let’s discuss the season that was, and how both players ended up contributing to a 112-point campaign for Dallas.

Kyle Capobianco - P

Let’s start with some context that applies to both players: how important they wound up being in the first 60 games of the year. Because as you may have heard recently, the Dallas Stars dealt with a few injuries on defense this year. Take a look at the long absences of Harley, Bichsel, and Lundkvist down below, and you’re realize just how heavily the Stars’ blueline was hit in the first half of the season in particular, which all three of the above players missed at least ten games:

Coming into the season, the 28-year-old Capobianco was slated to reprise his role from last year as an AHL stalwart who could play in the NHL in a pinch. Instead, he wound up staying in the NHL after a late October recall, eventually playing in over half of Dallas’s first 57 games—31 of them, to be exact.

It’s not like he was just punching the clock while the team was treading water, either. The Stars’ record in Capobianco’s 31 games before the Olympic break was a sparkling 20-6-5.

You know what happened after that, though: Lian Bichsel finally returned, and the Stars traded for Tyler Myers. As a result, Capobianco played just two of the team’s final 25 games.

Capobianco’s most common partner was the aforementioned Petrovic, and if I had told you that the third-best team in the NHL would play 27 games with both players on the same defense pairing, you probably would not have expected them to be on the ice for a massively positive 9-4 goal-differential that only slightly overstated their expected numbers, which featured sterling expected goal and high-danger shot differentials in the 55-56% range. But they did precisely that in over 135 minutes together at 5-on-5:

Natural Stat Trick

Capobianco added strong mobility and consistency on the back end, proving that his one-game cameo in Pete DeBoer’s final season was a fluke. The veteran defenseman stepped up as a key depth player for Dallas, also playing with Nils Lundkvist and Vladislav Kolyachonok when the need arose.

Capobianco’s first goal of the season came in Madison Square Garden during a game that was unfortunately overshadowed by Tyler Seguin’s ACL injury.

His second goal of the year came in a similarly ignominious result, when the Stars blew a 4-2 lead in San Jose despite Capobianco scoring a beautiful goal off the rush on a 2-on-1 with Roope Hintz:

The “P” here is for Perseverance, because Capobianco showed that even after playing one NHL game across two seasons for two different organizations, he was still the same NHL-quality player that the Coyotes drafted in the third round back in 2015.

(I wrote about Capobianco back in January, in case you missed it.)

Kyle Capobianco Is an Underrated Storyline of the 2025-26 Dallas Stars Season

After watching Capobianco at the NHL and AHL levels for the past couple of years, I’ve grown to really admire how he goes about his business. He’s someone who has clearly found a stable place in his life despite enduring the ups and downs of being on the fringe of the NHL roster at times, and he was very candid about how he’s taken steps in his life to ensure that he can weather the pressure and uncertainty of his role without letting it affect him negatively.

Maybe the “P” is also for Proven, because after watching what Capobianco did in the NHL this year, I think he proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he can be a quality addition to any NHL team’s blue line. He demonstrated the ability to play smart, quick hockey without giving up bad chances the other way, while also embracing whatever role he had. He had the same positive approach as a player for five games to start the year in the AHL, as a role player, an every player when injuries hit the roster, an occasional PP2 quarterback, or eventually a healthy scratch.

I’m not sure you could ask any more of a depth defenseman than what Kyle Capbianco gave Dallas this season. Here’s hoping he gets another chance to show why he spent most of the year in the NHL, whether with Dallas or another club.

Alex Petrovic - E

Like Capobianco, Petrovic also scored two goals in a season where he featured heavily in the first half. Petrovic began the year as a healthy scratch for two games, but he drew in against Minnesota in Game 3 for what looked likely to be a season-long rotation between Petrovic and Ilya Lyubushkin before injuries largely derailed that plan.

Petrovic was quickly pressed into full-time duty after Nils Lundkvist’s early injury, when Ilya Lyubushkin was moved up onto the second pairing with Thomas Harley. Petrovic slid up next to Lian Bichsel, until further injuries necessitated a heavier mix of Petrovic, Capbianco, Lyubushkin, and Kolyachonok.

Earlier in the year, Petrovic was a stabilizing force next to Bichsel, but as his minutes increased out of necessity later in November, his performance dipped. After Bichsel went down, Petrovic played next to Thomas Harley and Lyubushkin (playing on his off-hand side), and he never really found good chemistry with either of them. He and Capobianco had a good couple of four-game sets together (as we mentioned), but when Lundkvist finally came back, the Stars had three RHDs for two bottom-four RHD spots, and Petrovic struggled to regain his early-season form.

Still, it was a season with some very good moments for Petrovic, who finally got to spend an entire year in the NHL rather than waiting until the playoffs to parachute in. I saw Petrovic’s first goal in Montreal back in November, which was the sixth goal in a 7-0 slaughter. Radek Faksa pulled off a gorgeous spin move to set up an onrushing Petrovic, who nailed the far corner with ease:

His second goal came in Winnipeg, as Petrovic continued to haunt the Jets after his crazy goal that bounced in thanks to Connor Hellebuyck in the playoffs last year. This one was more conventional:

However, the moment from Petrovic’s season that stuck with me the most is probably from the third game of the year, when Matt Duchene got concussed by Jake Middleton.

Petrovic stepped up for a fallen teammate, gamely going up against Middleton (who had six fights last season) and taking some additional punishment as a result. But it was a moment early in the season that called for someone to step up, and that’s precisely what Petrovic has been doing for this organization for three years now.

(Petrovic’s glove throw-down before that fight was pretty great, even if he did wind up with an instigator penalty as a result.)

Petrovic’s “E” is for Exceeds Expectations, because that’s what he’s done each time Dallas has asked him to step up. This season, unfortunately, featured a bigger ask than usual when the blue line was decimated with injuries, and the ask might also have exceeded what was reasonable to hope for from Petrovic (or any third-pairing defenseman). Petrovic was asked to play 20+ minutes in November when the Stars were severely shorthanded, and he was then asked to step into a rotating cast of defense partners during the team’s twelve-game winter swoon.

Through all that, Petrovic still wound up finishing the year at plus-two, averaging 15:21 per night—the highest NHL workload since Petrovic’s 2018-19 season. In over 280 minutes together at 5-on-5, the Bichsel-Petrovic pairing saw Dallas outscore the opposition 12-9 when they were on the ice, though it’s worth mentioning that the duo also outscored their underlying numbers by a significant margin:

Natural Stat Trick

It’s also worth pointing out, however, that this defense duo was absolutely buried in the defensive zone in terms of where they started their shifts, so in that sense, perhaps results were more important than how they were achieved.

Petrovic wound up playing 54 games in the regular season, his highest NHL total in nearly a decade. And despite some struggles in the middle of the season when he was asked to play a heavier and more complex role with a rotating cast of partners, Petrovic finished his campaign with a moment of redemption, once again being asked to come into the thick of a playoff series after very little recent NHL action.

After Tyler Myers played his way out of the lineup earlier in the Minnesota series, Petrovic was asked to reunite with Bichsel in Game 6. And in ten minutes together, the duo held serve. Like they did back in Petrovic’s first game of the year when he dropped the gloves with Middleton, the Stars’ third defense pairing did what was asked of them, giving up no goals and allowing the top half of the lineup the opportunity to win the game.

Unlike in October, the Stars’ top players wouldn’t be able to do that. But Petrovic finished his third straight Dallas playoff run in the lineup, playing in a role that suited him well. Coaches keep going back to him when the stakes are at their highest, and Petrovic has shown for three straight years why that’s no fluke at all.