Matt Duchene, Tyler Seguin, and Centering Solutions

The answers aren't always easy, but they tend to show up eventually

Matt Duchene arrives for the Stars’ home opener against Minnesota. October 14, 2025

The Dallas Stars are a team with a top-drawer roster. They have been for years, in fact, as their recent playoff runs showed. And it’s one of the big reasons they came into this year ranked as one of the top Stanley Cup contenders by a variety of media outlets.

That doesn’t mean they have the perfect lineup, though. No team does. And when injuries and the salary cap require hard choices, those imperfections tend to look even bigger.

For example, the Stars are without Matt Duchene right now. Glen Gulutzan said on Wednesday that Duchene remains day-to-day, and my guess is that he’s not likely for tomorrow’s contest against Los Angeles, as Duchene continues to deal with residual effects of the Jake Middleton hit that caught him flush in the side of the face.

Gulutzan has said he didn’t like the hit and thought it was high, but if you want a summary of the opposite line of thinking, this video is a pretty clear breakdown, whether or not you agree with it.

One thing everyone does agree with, however, is that there is significant contact to Duchene’s head here.

The good news is that I’ve been able to confirm that Duchene wasn’t diagnosed with a concussion, which is why he has been able to continue skating, even returning to play in St. Louis after sitting out of the Vancouver game two days after the hit.

The bad news is that Duchene still isn’t fully healthy, which isn’t surprising when you remember that he took a huge hit to the side of his head. Clean hit or no, that level of major impact tends to have effects on the human body.

What exactly those lingering effects might be isn’t publicly known, but we do know that Duchene has toyed with different visors, trying a tinted one before morning skate on Tuesday before going back to his usual clear visor at practice on Wednesday.

At practice today, Duchene skated and participated a bit, but he once again didn’t take regular line rushes. And here were those lines today, since I know how much you folks love to pretend that forward lines aren’t going to change 30 minutes into the next game:

Steel-Hintz-Rantanen
Robertson-Johnston-Bourque
Hryckowian-Seguin-Blackwell
Erne-Faksa-Bastian

Duchene and Oskar Bäck (the latter of whom Gulutzan said the team hopes will get back into game action by the end of the week) rotated in at practice occasionally, but neither was a staple on a particular line.

Duchene didn’t play against Columbus on Tuesday night, missing his second out of the last three games for Dallas. That “one step forward, one step back” process has surely been a frustrating one for him and his team, and his not skating on a regular line in practice on Wednesday is a pretty clear indicator that he’s not quite back to full health.

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Duchene’s absence has necessitated some tough choices from the Stars. One of that was seen when Sam Steel and Tyler Seguin played center for different halves of the game Tuesday night, with Steel moving from third-line center up to the top line left wing midway through the game, alongside Mikko Rantanen and Roope Hintz.

(Aside: before you all throw your “Sam Steel on the top line?!” takes out there, here’s some early food for thought: That trio has a 61.5 xGF% so far this year per Natural Stat Trick—far better than Robertson-Hintz-Rantanen, which has just a 43% xGF. Checkmate, nerds.)¹

Steel’s shift on Tuesday coincided with Seguin being moved from that same top-line left-winger spot to centering the Stars’ best line of the second half of the game against Columbus, where he scored the team’s only goal of the game playing between Adam Erne and Colin Blackwell.

“He was with ‘Rants and Roope,” Gulutzan said of Seguin, “And I didn’t think that they had a lot going—no one had a lot going in the first. So I made the switch. I thought Erne had some jump, and I thought that when Tyler went to center, he had more jump.”

In Steel’s case, center was his usual spot under Pete DeBoer, while Seguin has largely been used as a winger since the arrival of Duchene back in the summer of 2023. But the two may wind up in opposite positions more frequently in the near future while the Stars look to snap their losing streak—especially if Duchene doesn’t return right away.

Gulutzan isn’t committing to any lineup decisions at this point, but he did elaborate a bit on Wednesday on what he saw from Seguin after the veteran was moved to center—where he played for most of his first decade in Dallas.

“You know, when a guy’s played as much center as [Seguin] has,” Gulutzan said, “Sometimes it is good to get them off the wing, so it frees them up to skate a little bit more. Especially with a player of his caliber and IQ, sometimes just getting you off the wing allows you to skate. And I thought he had some pop after.”

One sign of that “pop” was Seguin’s goal, which came after a nice breakout that led to a 2-on-1, with Adam Erne facilitating Seguin’s rush up the middle of the ice with a nice play along the wall. That led to the 2-on-1 with Seguin and Blackwell, and the play eventually ended in the Stars’ only goal of the game.

Gulutzan pointed to that play on Wednesday, in fact, in talking about how the Stars have “simplified” their breakouts a bit. It’s well-worth a listen, starting at around the 7:00 mark of this video.

One point Gulutzan made is that while you want to retain some individualism in how players break out, the statistics are pretty clear: trying to go up the middle after a standard D-to-D pass has about a 4% success rate, at least in the playoffs. That means you have to be able to use the walls to break out of your own zone effectively, and that’s exactly what happened on Seguin’s goal.

Take a look at how Ilya Lyubushkin (#46) finds Adam Erne (#73) for a quick bump pass to Seguin (#91).

It’s a great little play against the heavy, three-man forecheck Columbus had going. You’ve probably noticed similarly heavy forechecks causing issues for the Stars in prior games, but here, the Stars managed to escape it with a pretty simple play. One of the two Columbus defenseman is forced to step up and cover Erne at the blue line, leaving just one player back in the neutral zone to face Seguin and Blackwell after the slick pass (and gathering of said pass by Seguin) got the Stars on their way.

“Sometimes when you play on the wall too much and you play center, it’s good just to get your legs moving,” Gulutzan said of the move. And indeed, Seguin’s legs (and hands²) were working last night.

Three years ago, Seguin was a key part of stabilizing the Stars’ top line when Roope Hintz was out for a few games, centering Jason Robertson and Joe Pavelski. That skill is still there, right alongside the responsible, defensive work Seguin exhibited under Ken Hitchcock (and subsequent coaches) from 2017 and onward. It was only half a game, but Seguin looked really solid playing center for the first time in a while on Tuesday, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he gets more frequent chances to do so, based on what Gulutzan has said.

In years past, the Stars have had a luxury of centers to choose from throughout the lineup, and that’s allowed them to elevate players like Wyatt Johnston up to top-line winger positions when needed, particularly last season after the retirement of Joe Pavelski. But with Duchene day-to-day and Oskar Bäck still out, the Stars aren’t as deep down the middle right now, and that means it’s a bit tougher to “load up” a line unless it’s late in the game.

Ideally, Wyatt Johnston, Jason Robertson, and Mavrik Bourque can continue to build chemistry to be a dangerous scoring line on top of the Rantanen-Hintz duo (whoever plays on their left wing). And if Seguin can center his own line with offensive potential as well, the Stars will have some serious scoring depth despite missing four players just six games into the season.

One other benefit of Seguin holding the fort at center is that it could allow Duchene not to feel like he needs to rush back (though he’ll surely keep pushing to get back as soon as he can, as most every hockey player does). As players will tell you, there’s nothing worse than being out of the lineup, unable to help when the team is not playing its best.

After undergoing a major hip surgery and grinding out a months-long recovery last season, Seguin looks as healthy as he’s been in years right now. And with Jamie Benn still at least weeks away from returning to the lineup as well, Tyler Seguin may need to keep stepping up for Dallas, both on and off the ice.

Judging by Tuesday night—and heck, his entire Stars career—Tyler Seguin will welcome that challenge.

1. (Obviously Robertson is an elite scoring winger, and Steel is not, and Robertson does still get put up with the top duo late in games when the Stars need goals. But with the Stars trying to get multiple lines going with scoring threats, it’s worth pointing to data that appears to back up their decisions right now. Something to watch, at the very least.)

2. By the way, I wasn’t certain last night if Seguin had gotten a stick on his goal or if the puck had bounced off his leg, but Colin Blackwell said today after practice that he believes Seguin did indeed get his blade on the puck. I’m inclined to take an NHL player’s word for it.