Dallas Stars Development Camp Kicks off, and the Possibility of Offer Sheets for Mavrik Bourque and Jason Robertson
Both players are eligible to sign offer sheets from other teams starting Wednesday, if they receive any
The first day of development camp in Frisco was a blast, even if the bigger news happened afterward.
It was especially neat to see newly drafted players hit the ice like Ryan Brown, Jakub Vaněček, Anton Wilde Larsen (who sports just “Wilde” on the back of his sweater), and Jasper Kuhta.
Some other highlights today were hearing Dylan Hryckowian speak to the media about playing with the same organization as his brother, and talking with Emil Hemming about being on the floor at the NHL draft with his brother, Oscar, when he was drafted in the first round by Columbus on Friday.
And of course, it’s always good to see returning draftees like Måns Goos as well.
Vaněček, the Stars’ second-round pick last Saturday, hit the ice wearing a Dallas Stars sweater for the first time in his career after being drafted over the weekend, and he also spoke with the media afterwards.
In fact, Vaněček told us today that he has already received a text message from fellow Czech native Radek Faksa after being drafted by Dallas. The two haven’t met yet, but even little things like that can matter a lot to 18-year-olds coming into their first NHL team.
Today’s on-ice sessions were very routine, with fairly little contact happening (other than a few spills). Cameron Schmidt looks even more skilled (and perhaps a bit bigger) than he was last year, and Emil Hemming’s confidence is as high as I’ve ever seen it. Vaněček also looked pretty smooth considering he was watching the draft in Czechia 72 hours ago.
But as Rich Peverley said himself today, this week isn’t really an info-gathering session, as such. The Stars have been watching all these players very closely for a while now. This week is more about, well, development. That’s why the organization brings in outside voices as well, including people like Rachel Flanagan, an assistant coach with the Toronto Sceptres of the PWHL who directed some of earlier group’s on-ice work today, along with more familiar faces like Jordie Benn, Stan Tugolukov, and Ryan Daniels.
That doesn’t mean we won’t still be drawing some of our own conclusions, however. We’ll have a big Development Camp Digest tomorrow, as well as many more updates throughout the week, so stay tuned.
For now, let’s get to the next chapter of this summer’s ongoing saga in Dallas. You know the one.
Late on Monday afternoon, the Stars announced that they had extended qualifying offers to three players: Jason Robertson, Mavrik Bourque, and Arttu Hyry.
In that same press release, Dallas confirmed that they had not qualified the following players: Francesco Arcuri, Vladislav Kolyachonok, Benjamin Kraws, Kyle McDonald, Jeremie Poirier, Antonio Stranges, Samu Tuomaala, and Chase Wheatcroft.
Stephen Meserve wrote over at 100 Degree Hockey today about the players Dallas didn’t retain rights to, so check that out here if you haven’t seen it yet. There aren’t too many surprises, especially with rumors of Kolyachonok heading back to Europe this summer. Samu Tuomaala was a key spark for Texas’s offense after he was acquired for Christian Kyrou last season, but his season-ending knee injury might mean that Dallas re-engages with his camp once his recovery is complete.
As always, it’s important to remember that not qualifying a player doesn’t always mean an organization is completely done with them. Dallas, of course, didn’t qualify Nils Lundkvist or Sam Steel in the summer of 2024, only to re-sign both players as free agents on July 1. We’ll see if that proves to be the case with any of the players above.
Now, let’s get into the implications of the fact that the Stars are right on the cusp of risking offer sheets to the players they did qualify today. We’ll go one-by-one.
Mavrik Bourque
Bourque is, I think, the player who profiles as most at risk of getting signed by another team to an offer sheet. Let’s go over his whole situation.
The fact that Dallas is still in the midst of figuring out the Jason Robertson situation might have kept them from knowing exactly how much cap room they’d have to work with, for Bourque. Signing him for, say, a two-year, $3 million AAV contract would directly impact what Dallas can offer to Robertson, so it’s tricky to get things done while the biggest question (Robertson) remains unanswered.
And if you’re Dallas, I suspect a longer-term extension to keep Bourque for five or six years at a higher AAV would also be desirable, if they wound up moving Robertson and having the room to do so. Perhaps both of those things will still happen, and this is just a way to buy time. But it doesn’t come with a cost, because here’s what happens now: Bourque’s qualifying offer is $997,500. He has until July 5 to decide whether to accept that offer, negotiate a separate one with Dallas, file for salary arbitration, or to sign an offer sheet with another team before July 5.
Bourque would almost certainly decline to sign his qualifying offer (QO), as scoring 20 goals in the NHL means an independent arbitrator would very likely award him a much higher contract than his QO—possibly somewhere in the $3-4 million range. If a player elects arbitration as you’d expect Bourque would, then the team would have the ability to select either a one- or two-year term once the arbitrator decides on the salary.
As for the final option, Bourque can now begin to talk with other teams and weigh offer sheets from them. Here are the thresholds for compensation for each type of offer sheet, for reference. If a team were to offer Bourque a contract with an AAV of $4.7 million, he could sign that, and Dallas would only get a second-round pick as compensation if they didn’t (or couldn’t) match it.
I’ve been operating under the assumption that Dallas would have preferred to sign Bourque before now and avoid the risk that comes with allowing other teams to start talking with Bourque at all. His younger age and the lower compensation thresholds make him a much more appealing offer sheet target than someone like Robertson, who would require a team to give Dallas their next four first-round picks after signing him.
However, if the Stars believe they will be moving on from Robertson, then maybe they don’t see offer sheets as that much of a risk to Bourque, as they would simply just match any offer sheets that were to come in. Even something in the $6-7 million range wouldn’t be out of the question if it had some term attached.
The fascinating question here is what you would do if you were another team trying to snag Bourque. How would you structure an offer sheet if you wanted to keep Dallas from being able to match it? In a weird way, you also can’t really know the answer to that question without knowing what’s going on with Robertson.
So just as has been the case for months now, Robertson and Bourque’s fates are still linked. Signing Robertson even for $12 million would have made it almost impossible to go up to even $4 million for Bourque, but by not signing either player yet, there’s some flexibility along with the uncertainty, and maybe the Stars are counting on that to discourage teams from attempting offer sheets, for now.
Again, that comes with a ton of risk. Merely allowing your players to start talking with other teams comes with the very real risk of them getting lured elsewhere. Even though I do still think the Stars aren’t likely to let Bourque get nabbed with an offer sheet, it’s not exactly the cleanest way to get things done, but Dallas’s cap crunch is forcing them to operate a little differently than usual this summer.
All told, it wouldn’t shock me if Dallas wound up re-signing Bourque for something reasonable (2 years at $3M per, for example). But again, the Robertson situation is a key part of all this, so perhaps it’s all dependent on which domino falls first: an offer sheet for Bourque, or a resolution for Robertson
Jason Robertson
Pierre LeBrun just tweeted this, in case you’re wondering whether Dallas is still trying to find a way to keep Robertson.
Jason Robertson’s qualifying offer is $9.3 million. I would be gobsmacked, floored, and bowled over all at once if he were to accept that QO rather than filing for salary arbitration.
As for offer sheets, I wonder if those wouldn’t almost be welcomed by Dallas, at this point. Given the potentially reduced return Dallas is facing with Robertson unwilling to sign extensions with teams like Seattle, getting four unprotected first-round picks from a team probably seems pretty appealing. And oftentimes, a team that’s threatening an offer sheet will reach out ahead of time to see if the team is willing to negotiate a trade that works better for both sides. That certainly doesn’t seem out of the question, for me.
What also doesn’t seem out of the question is for Dallas and Robertson still, somehow, to find a way to stay together. It would require a level of compromise we haven’t seen so far, and as we discussed, it would also have real ramifications for Bourque. But if there’s a world where Dallas and Robertson could find a way to compromise, then a lot of other things could be possible, so you wonder if Nill might have a bigger plan in place than we can see so far.
One thing I told someone today is that fans might be starting to understand why Colorado wound up trading Mikko Rantanen, after going through somewhat similarly frustrating negotiations with Andy Scott and Rantanen back in early 2025. At a certain point, an organization just wants to get things settled, even if it means moving on from an extremely valuable player. You can’t hang in limbo forever, and it’s not a great thing for the rest of the team to constantly be hearing about one player holding up all these other moves—even if it’s for good reasons.
Remember, Robertson’s last contract negotiation came in his first RFA year, before he had arbitration rights. That’s why it dragged into training camp (and the entire preseason), but it did eventually get done. (And unlike Jamie Benn’s first RFA negotiation back in 2012, Robertson got signed before the NHL season actually began.)
Players can begin signing offer sheets on July 1, so that’s obviously a big date to watch out for. If Robertson doesn’t sign an offer sheet, then he’d have to file for arbitration by the players’ deadline of July 5 at 4:00PM Central, kicking the can further down the road.
Arttu Hyry
Lost in all this is the fact that Hyry is also a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. I don’t think there’s much risk of an offer sheet here. Hyry is a useful player the Stars want to keep, and whom the coaching staff values highly. Without the Stars knowing exactly how much space they’ll have to work with regarding the two names above, even doing something like $1.5 million over a longer term for Hyry could preclude some options they might want to keep on the table for Bourque and Robertson—hence the current delay. But I can’t imagine he’d be going anywhere.
In both Hyry and Bourque’s case, I have to think some type of assurances have been given, and that both sides have a good understanding of the likely outcomes here. Hyry has been found money since being signed as a free agent, and he profiles as a key center/winger for a team that may not have a ton of depth up front regardless of whether Robertson is part of the group or not. There is a clear NHL opportunity for Hyry in Dallas, and that means a lot to undrafted players.
Hyry’s qualifying offer is the league minimum of $850K, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets something like the Oskar Bäck deal (relative to the higher cap in place now), and winds up signing a multi-year extension in the neighborhood of $1 million per season.