Matt Dumba and Second-Round Pick Traded to Pittsburgh for Vladislav Kolyachonok

No salary was retained in the deal

Matt Dumba after beating Zach Bogosian in a fight.

The Stars finally made the move that seemed like a foregone conclusion months ago, as they traded Matt Dumba to the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for 24-year-old defenseman Vladislav Kolyachonok on Thursday. Dallas also sent Pittsburgh a 2028 second-round draft pick to complete the deal.

The exchange was first noticed by Sean Shapiro, who happened to be looking at NHL rosters in mid-July on a Thursday afternoon for some unimaginable reason that I am assuming is just his journalistic spidey sense.

The exact terms of the deal were later announced, with the delay being related to one of the player’s unavailability.

Kolyachonok hails from Belarus, which is seven hours ahead of Pittsburgh time, while Dumba got married just a few days ago. So, either player could quite understandably have been tough to reach today.

As for the deal itself, it’s pretty straightforward: Dallas unloads a player they didn’t want to keep for a younger player with some upside who is making the league minimum in salary. Dallas almost certainly had to pay a 2nd-round pick (albeit one three drafts away) to get Pittsburgh to take Dumba’s full $3.75 million cap hit for this season.

The Penguins, on the other hand, turned a player they got for free by claiming him off waivers from Utah last season into a draft pick three years from now. Kolyachonok was basically a 6th/7th defenseman for the Penguins next season, so with the team looking likely to be angling for a high draft pick next year, Kyle Dubas got a draft pick and an NHL veteran who will ensure the Penguins would stay above the salary cap floor even if they traded Erik Karlsson.

Somehwat poetically, Kolyachonok was part of another trade involving a second-round pick back in 2021, when the Panthers included him and a second-rounder in order to unload Anton Stralman’s contract to Arizona. Is Kolyachonok the currency of the future? Will we one day walk up to the counter and say, “gimme five bees for a Kolyachonok”? Only time will tell.

If you want to get excited about Kolyachonok, then you can watch some of his slick skating in the first goal included in these highlights:

He’s 6-foot-2, if you care about that sort of thing. Realistically, it’s tough to see the Stars keeping him on the roster all season with four left-shot defenders ahead of him in Harley, Heiskanen, Lindell, and Bichsel. That’s basically the same situation Pittsburgh was in, and I mean, that’s Pittsburgh, so, yeah.

Kolyachonok’s mobility miiight make him a long-shot option to play on the right side in a time of need, but with the NHL roster as it stands now, I think it’s more likely that he’ll find himself being put on waivers again unless injury or another move opens up a spot for him in Dallas. Whether or not he clears will depend entirely on the state of rosters around the league, but before Texas Stars fans get too excited, my bet would be that he will either be in Dallas or another NHL city come next October. He’s simply too useful—and his contract too affordable—to expect 31 other teams to let him go more often than not.

My first instinct upon reading the terms of the deal was that a second-round pick is a heavy price to pay to unload Dumba in exchange for a player that might not even make your starting lineup, but that’s not really what this trade was about. Clearing cap space was the goal, and Nill netted $3 million without having to do a buyout or retain salary. More than anything, the Stars made a move to purchase flexibility, and that’s a perfectly adequate end in and of itself.

More moves are certainly still possible, but Dallas will wary of making another mistake like last summer, as the fit with Dumba just never materialized. And yes, the Dumba signing turned out to be a rare Jim Nill mistake no matter which way you look at it. Then again, I said last year that Dumba could be the better of the two questionable signings between him and Ilya Lyubushkin, so maybe all of us have some egg on our faces.

If they end up waiving Kolyachonok or Alex Petrovic before opening night, the Stars would be just under $2 million below the salary cap (which is what PuckPedia is presuming they would do right now). That means they have space to add two more players if they wanted to, whether that ends up being someone like Justin Hryckowian or a free agent willing to sign for a lower price like, for example, Jeff Skinner (who made $3 million last season with Edmonton but could perhaps be willing to take less in Dallas).

As much as a 2028 draft pick feels like Monopoly money, there’s no denying that the Stars’ experiment of turning Dumba into a serviceable partner for Miro Heiskanen went about as poorly as such an experiment can go. Dumba missed multiple stints due to injury, one of which happened due to an non-game incident that both he and the Stars declined to elaborate on. And while he did play useful minutes down the stretch for a team without Heiskanen or Nils Lundkvist, Dumba is now facing the prospect of playing for his fifth team in four years after being scratched for an entire playoff run in Dallas. In other words, he’s got a lot to prove—even more than he did last summer.

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NB: On a personal level, I’ll add that Dumba was always generous with his time, which is something he’s known for. As a player who suffered from racial abuse growing up, his efforts to eradicate racism in hockey through the Hockey Diversity Alliance were noteworthy. Here’s hoping Dumba can rejuvenate his career this season on a team looking to the future.