The Jason Robertson Trade Rumors Just Won't Go Away
Why might that be?
I know, I know.
Trust me, I don’t enjoy talking about this any more than you do. It’s even more loathsome that we’re here again today considering we’ve done whole stories on this exact thing—as recently as a month ago, in fact!
Nevertheless, the talk around Robertson as a potential trade target has persisted. If anything, it feels like the talk about any potential trade has actually heated up since July 1. That’s concerning, or exciting, or both, depending on how you feel. I don’t know you, man, that’s your business.
It’s been odd how loud the noise has been, though. Think back to previous extensions for Jake Oettinger or Roope Hintz. You never heard anything close to this sort of noise around potentially trading them, right? There was just a general sense of “oh, this will need to get done,” and then, in the fullness of time, it got done.
With Robertson, it’s been very different. His name keeps winding up “out there,” and now we’re hearing about numbers and timelines, too. And for a characteristically quiet front office like Dallas, that’s unusual. Which is to say, I think there’s a reason for that.
I had a chance to chat about this briefly with Gavin on Spits and Suds Monday afternoon, but here’s the nuts and bolts right now:
Jason Robertson has one year left on his great-value deal ($7.75M AAV) before he becomes a restricted free agent next summer with one year of team control remaining.
According to connected people like Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman this week, the Stars would like to sign Robertson to a longer-term extension this summer (he just became eligible to sign such a deal on July 1)—namely, the Stars would like a deal with a cap hit of not much over $10 million per year.
If Robertson doesn’t want to sign for the number the Stars have set as their max, Marek said Monday that he believes the Stars would then look to, yes, trade Jason Robertson this summer.
(The key quotes from Marek start at 58:50 of this video, for the record.)
The follow-up question you’re probably asking right now is: why do the Stars want to get Robertson signed so badly right now? Can’t they wait until the season gets going, or even until next summer, when they’ll still have a year of team control remaining? Just because he might not want to sign now, couldn’t they wait and see what happens this year?
Yes, they could. But I don’t think they want to.
Remember, Robertson’s last RFA contract was a grind. Negotiations three years ago dragged into early October 2022, when there was finally enough leverage to cause some compromise to happen. That resulted in a four-year deal at $7.75 million per season, which immediately turned into a fair bit of a bargain for Dallas, with Robertson putting up 109, 80, and 80 points respectively in the following three seasons.
But the protracted nature of those negotiations caused Robertson to miss all of training camp and the preseason—not that it hurt him any, given that he went on to have a record-setting season after which he would be named a First-Team All-Star. It wasn’t a fun negotiation, by all accounts, and it would be far less fun with a player’s walk year hovering over all the proceedings.
That 2022 bridge deal’s difficulty showed all the signs of its being just a warm-up for the real drama: hashing out a contract that could buy some of Robertson’s free-agency years, starting in 2027. Which is where we are, now.
I would think the Stars have little appetite to repeat the process from last time with Robertson heading into his walk year, as the leverage only shifts more and more to his side as time goes on. So it makes sense the team would like to get clarity now. That’s why I think these negotiations seem to be such a priority, and it’s also why I think we’re hearing purpotedly real numbers and timelines.
Just look at what the Maple Leafs ended up dealing with as Mitch Marner’s contract ticked down to its eventual conclusion. That wasn’t fun for anybody involved, and it was only a result of something that definitely wasn’t blackmail that Toronto ended up being able to get anything at all for Marner at the 11th hour.
Dallas wants no part of that sort of thing. Jim Nill is, I think, willing to give Robertson what the Stars consider an equitable long-term deal to keep him in Dallas. But if he’s looking for a payday well beyond their budgeted amount for him, they want to know that now, so they can plan accordingly. With the salary cap rapidly going up, players are looking for raises, and Robertson will certainly deserve one. Figuring out whether there is any common ground at all makes sense to do as soon as possible. (Again, see Toronto.)
Given how surprisingly public some of these details have become lately, I wonder if the idea here has been to test the market for a Robertson trade by getting his name out there, as well as to prepare the fanbase for such a trade, if and when it ends up becoming necessary.1 It would be wise to prepare people who something like this, given how marketable a star Robertson has been over the year. The last thing the Stars woudl want in the offseason is for fans to feel blindsided by a star player being shipped out of town. Best to pave the way a bit, should it become necessary.
Marek tossed out the idea of moving Robertson to Anaheim (who need wingers) in exchange for a package headed by a defenseman like Jackson LaCombe, which is the bones of a Hockey Trade if I’ve ever seen one. LaCombe is a fantastic left-shot defenseman about a year and a half younger than Robertson in the last year of his entry-level contract, so that kind of swap would obviously do some good things for Dallas, albeit without balancing out the right side of their defense much at all. One would think Dallas would be able to ask for even more in that sort of a deal, though I don’t see Pat Verbeek including someone like Mason McTavish along with LaCombe, so stop dreaming about such absurdities.
Still, I’m not altogether certain a deal like that, as appealing (and fictional) as it may be, would make Dallas a clearly better team the next day. Because losing Robertson would mean losing a whole lot.
Jason Robertson is a fantastic hockey player, and the Stars know that. In fact, I think they’d like to keep him, because he does one of the most important things in hockey better than most others can do it. As another former Star once put it:
Even last year, when Robertson was coming off foot surgery and had a dreadful first half, he still ended the season 14th in the entire NHL at 5-on-5 goals. That’s incredible, given how off he looked in the fall.
But no, Robertson finished tied in even-strength goals with Leon Draisaitl, and just one behind William Nylander and Nikita Kucherov. That’s elite company, and Robertson only wound up there because he got cooking from late December on. He was a big, big part of keeping the offense afloat after Tyler Seguin and Miro Heiskanen went down for most of the second half. It’s just a shame that one of his better playoff series performances came after the rest of the team’s offense had already begun planning an early vacation.
Robertson’s talents aren’t just a blip, either. Since 2022, Robertson has scored the 16th-most goals in the NHL in all situations, just one behind Kucherov and Kirill Kaprizov (who is also looking for a record-setting deal of his own this summer in Minnesota).
And in overall points since 2022, Robertson is even better: 12th in the league, tied with William Nylander, and just a single point shy of Auston Matthews (though he is still 28 points behind some guy named Mikko Rantanen, so I guess there’s room for improvement).
In other words: Robertson is an elite NHL scorer. Taking him out of the Stars’ lineup in just about any scenario is going to mean Dallas has a lot more work to do when it comes to winning games, and that’s not a problem that solves itself.
That’s not to say Robertson is their only offensive threat, of course—particularly since they acquired one of the very few guys above him on those leaderboards at the deadline—but it is a fact that scoring tends to peak early in a player’s career. To that end, Robertson is younger than Rantanen, Hintz, Duchene, Benn, and Seguin. You absolutely cannot count on older players even maintaining their same production from year to year, let alone increasing it to fill a void the size of Robertson’s, should that come to pass.
Robertson has also been able to stay on the ice during those last few years, playing every single game until his MCL sprain at the very end of the season that took him out for the first round of the playoffs this year. And even after working his way back from that injury, Robertson managed to lead Dallas in scoring in the third round against Edmonton when almost every other offensive threat disappeared.
However, it’s important to understand something about Robertson. I want to give you a chance to do some research on video, rather than just talking about numbers, so go ahead and watch some or all of Robertson’s 35 goals last season yourself.
The more you watch Jason Robertson highlights, the more you kind of understand the reason he is at least seen as tradeable, as opposed to someone like Miro Heiskanen.
Yes, Robertson has a surgical goal-scoring ability. He is exceptionally capable of being in the right spot to bury a rebound, a pass, or a turnover. He is even more exceptionally capable of executing on his shots, which is no surprise when you hear about how much work and study he does in order to improve.
(Just ask Scott Wedgewood.)
Even more to that point, Robertson is a shootout wizard, because dismembering goalies is his passion. He’s also continually working on his skating and defensive positioning, the latter of which has always been underrated, though perhaps not as drastically as some models suggest.
(For a longer conversation about Robertson from a time right before his scorching second half, check out Bob and Sean’s conversation from December. It’s a good one.)
But, here’s the thing: Robertson can have that condition where, when the puck isn’t going in, a fan might think he’s not trying, or a coach will say he’s “invisible,” and so forth. You remember what last fall was like, I’ll bet. The word “fun” was not a frequently used one.
In fact, you probably heard more than one good-natured barb from Pete DeBoer in press conferences last year, where the coach was willing to toss a barb Robertson’s way, often pointed at the fact that his skating is not particularly beautiful. Robertson has accomplished a lot in the NHL already, but he has not quite managed to look like Miro Heiskanen on the ice yet. (Almost nobody has.)
Those sorts of comments, benign though they were, also served as good reminders that Robertson is still seen by many as very much a player in the mold of Brett Hull, and everything that goes along with that. Move slow, shoot fast, score big, change little.
When he’s cruising, Robertson is nigh unstoppable. But he can disappear for stretches even when healthy, which is to say (*shocker ahead*) scorers are streaky, as they’ve always been, everywhere. And that causes frustrations, earned or not, which end up forming the bulk of the perception around his skills.
Watching those highlights, how many times do you see Robertson creep to the right part of the ice, or wind up exactly where a rebound ends up popping? It’s not quite Connor McDavid or Kyle Connor flying down the ice, but I seem to recall that they do not, in fact, ask how, but only how many. But with Robertson, the “how many” number may be exactly the issue at play, now.
To be clear, I’m not saying Robertson’s less-gorgeous methods have blinded his team to the value of the fact that he scores in spite of subpar skating. The team knows exactly how good he is, and they aren’t looking to trade him for pennies on the dollar. There’s no hurry, after all. Even with Dallas sitting a bit over the cap right now, they seem very confident that they’ll be able to address that issue in one way or another, independently of what they decided to do with Robertson.
All that to say, if a player like Matt Dumba were to be included in some giant trade, I would think his inclusion would be more a matter of convenience than the catalyst for the trade itself. Dallas wouldn’t risk losing leverage in a massive trade just to move one contract they don’t necessarily love the idea of keeping. You can rest easy in that regard—Jim Nill doesn’t rush these things.
The Stars can probably still be a very good team even if they end up deciding they have to move Robertson in order to get maximum value for him while also shoring up other areas of need on the roster in the process. They’re deep, albeit not so deep as they were,
But make no mistake: they would miss him, particularly when Rantanen goes quite for a couple of games, and without other young players like Logan Stankoven around to help soften the blow when it comes to getting scoring from the wings.
Here’s the Stars’ offense over the last three years. How many of Robertson’s points, do you think, would really have gone to another player, and how many of them are solely a result of skills Robertson has that most players don’t?
There are a lot of takeaways from this list (which obviously doesn’t include Rantanen’s prior numbers from Colorado or Duchene’s from Nashville), but here are four big ones that jump out at me when you talk about moving Robertson:
You’re all gonna lie about this, but I guarantee you I could’ve won a bunch of money by betting you that Jamie Benn had more points than Wyatt Johnston over the last three seasons.
Robertson had 62 more points than anyone else on Dallas over those three years. 62! Robertson scored like Hintz—a number one center—then added the point total of another top-six winger on top of that. Pretty good.
The similarities between Duchene’s last two years in scoring and Pavelski’s final two years in scoring for Dallas are almost spooky. It’s amazing how fantastic of a get Pavelski was for Dallas, in a ton of ways. But his scoring was also top-notch, after some hiccups early in year one.
Because of his injuries, Seguin has played about two seasons’ worth of games over that three-year timeframe, during which he had the same 55 goals as both Duchene and Pavelski. That’s less of a takeaway than just a fact, I guess.
All that to say: the question Dallas has to figure out if they’re contemplating a future without Robertson is, who else is going to make up that scoring?
I do worry that, to a certain extent, you can’t really replace a good chunk of those preternatural scoring instincts that Robertson has shown, honed, and refined. The other offensive guys are not getting younger, and while this year would be a just oh-so-great time for Mavrik Bourque to take a giant step, you can’t be certain that will happen.
The Stars’ offense was great last year, but it’s amazing how quickly firepower can evaporate when you bring fewer cannons to the front lines. Glen Gulutzan, I am starting to think, could have his work cut out for him.
Anyway, I went on this whole left wing rant to begin with because the reality of the Stars’ offense is that it could look grim in a hurry if Robertson ends up being blithely traded for, say, Rasmus Andersson or someone of that ilk. You need to get better, not just different. If the Stars don’t clearly win a Robertson trade, they probably shouldn’t consider making it. Even a bit less leverage next offseason would still be far better than hurting your Cup chances just to try to replicate Eric Tulsky’s haul at the end of the Rantanen saga (minus, you know, Rantanen).
The timing makes sense when it comes to exploring moving Robertson. When all is settled, this could all just have been part of the negotiation process, an attempt to get the Robertson camp to plant their flag on a number so talks can begin in earnest. Sometimes this is what it takes.
Still, Robertson’s scoring numbers are tough to scoff at. So, if the Stars wind up scoffing at his camp’s contract numbers instead, the Stars wouldn’t be foolish to look at how to extract the most value out of the two years of team control left on Robertson’s rights. Which, it appears, is exactly what they’re doing.
Because one thing you can bank on with Robertson is that he’s going to be scoring a point per night, over the long run. And it’s really hard to find another player who can do that.
If you are looking at the best way to facilitate a transition of power from one of the best scorers the franchise has ever had, then it doesn’t hurt to start window shopping early. And who knows? Perhaps that’s all Dallas has been doing. The Stars aren’t likely to ever have more leverage than they have now, fresh off a spring of Mikko Rantanen heroics and with a tight cap giving them something of a rationale for asking for players to choose whether to stay or not. Having a backup plan is just good planning, really.
If Robertson really wants to stay in Dallas, it seems like we’ll probably find that out in the near future here. He’s more than earned the right to make that decision. But however it all shakes out, some clarity will be good for everyone. Goodness knows we don’t want to have to do this a third time.
Or, “Look carefully at how Nico Harrison did the Luka deal, and just do the exact opposite every step of the way.”
Takeaway from reading this (man that was a lot of words, Robert!) is that everything depends on Robertson's reaction/desires when he sees the Stars' offer. If his desires are too rich for the current Stars' cap, then tradesville here we come. Also, suck it all you Benn haters. LOL! (not that I see that here, but in the gen pop I do all the time)
My opinion on a Robertson trade is really idk man it depends, if the Stars could get a good young defensemen who plays on the right side (like Tristan Luneau) and some other stuff I can see it working out but if they don't then it doesn't really make sense to me