The Stars' Cap Crunch Continues, but Mason Marchment Leaves Dallas with a Lot to Be Proud of
I look forward to the introductory press conferences for third-round and fourth-round draft pick
Just under a year ago, the Dallas Stars traded Radek Faksa to St. Louis. It was a bittersweet ending to Faksa’s time in Dallas, where he was drafted in the first round back in 2012. Faksa spent the better part of a decade as a tough, persistent checking-line center, and his departure was a necessity of the hard salary cap the NHL reminds us of every day, except for when we ask for them to make salary information public.
That Faksa trade was made last summer to clear cap space the day after free agency opened. It was the sort of ruthless business decision that Jim Nill has made more than you might remember, coming just a few days after the team bought out the final year of Ryan Suter’s contract. It gave the Stars enough room to go into the 2024-25 season with a bit of breathing room, though it would all end the same way: after two rounds of celebrations and a third round of disappointment.
This year’s first victim of the Stars’ cap crunch is Mason Marchment, who was traded to Seattle on Thursday evening in exchange for a third-round pick in 2026 and a fourth-rounder1 in this summer’s draft.
The move accomplishes two things for Dallas: Nill restocks a bit of draft capital (of which the Stars had precious little), and the Stars clear out the exact cap hit that Matt Duchene’s new contract requires, allowing them a bit more flexibility when it comes to filling their remaining roster spots.
Marchment’s contract was a good one on the whole, and a well-deserved reward after working his way to the NHL later than most, only to find his game in Florida for three years before coming to Dallas for what turned out to be another three. Marchment also held the distinction of being the son of the late Bryan Marchment, but any fear that the Stars would resent him for his father’s hit on Joe Nieuwnedyk in 1998 proved unfounded. Marchment scored in his first game in Dallas, and it was all smiles from there.
As we discussed with Duchene’s extension, the Stars also have the ability to clear a couple million more in cap space by buying out Matt Dumba tomorrow (Friday) if they wish, when the NHL’s buyout window opens.
Per PuckPedia’s buyouyt calculator, here’s what Matt Dumba’s buyout would look like:
The Stars would surely prefer to clear all of his cap hit in a trade, but given that Marchment—a productive and desirable NHL player on a reasonable one-year deal—only netted two mid-round picks, it’s hard to see Dumba being attractive to potential buyers without the Stars providing some extra incentive.
So the question for Nill is, do the Stars prefer to attach a mid-round pick in order to clear out that extra $1.4 million that would remain in a potential Dumba buyout, or would they rather retain draft picks and just ask Tom Gaglardi to write a check to a player who won’t be playing for them?
Those are the tough questions Jim Nill has to ask right now, and Marchment ended up being one of the answers, unfortunately.
Marchment has been a fascinating player to watch in Dallas since he was signed to a four-year deal at $4.5 million per seasons by Jim Nill back at the start of Pete DeBoer’s time in Dallas three years ago.
Marchment was coming off a year as one of the best fourth-line players in the NHL with Florida, and the Stars bet on Marchment’s value to increase with more time and responsibility. Marchment won them that bet, though anyone familiar with the Mason Marchment Experience™ knows his game is rarely unnoticeable, for reasons on both ends of the spectrum.
He scored some big goals for Dallas, but injuries were a big part of his story in his first and third Dallas seasons, though his final season would be his best, as he scored 47 points in just 62 games, including 22 goals for the second straight year.
Marchment also had a penchant for taking penalties at bad times, and the apex of this seesaw came in Game 3 of the first round against Colorado this year, when Marchment took a double minor with less than a minute to go in tie game, forcing his team to kill off four minutes of a power play in a sudden-death situation. But Esa Lindell and Mikko Rantanen made miraculous blocks to keep the Stars alive, and then Marchment was sent down the ice by Rantanen, and he set up his linemate for a goal the two of them will never forget.
It was a tough season for Marchment in multiple respects, though, particularly when it came to his face. He took a puck to the face early in the season, but that would end up being a minor wound compared to what happened against Minnesota late in December, when a deflected shot broke his nose into seven pieces, “shattering” his face according to Marchment.
Marchment couldn’t breathe through his nose for the better part of a month, but he would return in early February, wearing extra face protection another couple of months in order to get back up to speed for the playoffs.
He would do that, scoring a back-breaking netfront deflection goal against Colorado in Game 5. It would turn out to be his only goal of the playoffs, putting him on a list of nine Stars players with a single goal in the postseason.
In the end, that’s one of the reasons Marchment is gone. The Stars didn’t get the depth scoring (or the primary scoring) they needed to get past Edmonton, and so changes were always going to be happening this offseason. And as much as Marchment has been a positive for the Stars in multiple ways, a middle-six left winger with trade value is an easier asset to replace than someone like Jason Robertson, whom the Stars also discussed with other teams, according to Sean Shapiro (whose piece you should read, as always), but appear to have chosen to keep until they’re made an offer they can’t refuse.
Marchment’s time in Dallas might have had its ups and downs—he took a lot of penalties—but he won over everyone he played with, from linemates Matt Duchene and Tyler Seguin to his very good friend Jake Oettinger, who wished him well Thursday night after the trade announcement came down.
In conversations with Seguin and Duchene, they both said that Marchment was the ideal sort of F1, the first forechecker down the ice who used his reach, strength, and tenacity to win pucks you would never expect most players to win, setting up dangerous offensive-zone possession for a line that looked as good as any in the NHL when it was humming.
Many players can’t do what Marchment does, and it was a big factor in what made the Marchment-Duchene Seguin line so dominant for big stretches over the last two seasons. Now, they’ll have to find someone else to do that.
As for Jake Oettinger’s friendship with Marchment, that was less about their play on the ice, and more about their friendship off it. Oettinger even extended Marchment the honor of putting Marchment’s face on his mask.
Two Oettinger/Marchment stories from this year stick out to me:
First: At one point in the season, Oettinger told me that a puck had glanced off that golf-cart part of his mask in a game, and Marchment told him afterward, “I made that save.”
Second, please indulge me as I quote from my story from November about the Stars’ packing boxes of food for Metrocrest Services:
When asked who had the hardest job of the day, Oettinger didn’t hesitate to answer with a perfect deadpan. “I was on like three jobs, and I don’t think I said a word for an hour,” said Oettinger, holding back a grin. “I was just like a machine right there, so I thought I won MVP today.”
When asked who had the easiest job of the day, Oettinger likewise didn’t hesitate to give one of his good friends a hard time. “Probably Mason,” said Oettinger with a suppressed smirk. “It’s not surprising he picked the easiest job, but you know, we made up for him.”
Now, Marchment will be trying to beat Oettinger, as he joins a list of the Stars’ goalie’s good buddies that includes Scott Wedgewood and Ty Dellandrea, who now play for other NHL teams.
Marchment had a ten-team no-trade list, so either Seattle wasn’t on it—remember, there’s no state income tax in Washington—or else Marchment waived it in order to go there. My guess would be the former.
Either way, it’s a tough break for Marchment, who goes from a team that made it to the third round in every season he played to a team that looks ready for a rebuild despite only being four years old. Possibly Marchment will be flipped at the trade deadline next year. And perhaps Dallas will be looking for help if they’re in contention, as we’d expect them to be. Maybe there there is a world in which the Stars would re-acquire Marchment for yet another playoff run with a bit of Jamie Oleksiak rental-return magic.
It’s unlikely, but whether he ends up returning to Dallas or not, there’s no denying that Marchment has made his mark on fans and teammates alike over the last three years. And whether that mark left a bruise or a memory, he’ll be missed by a whole lot of folks.
You have surely heard by now that this is Dallas’s original fourth-round draft pick that was part of the package they traded to the Rangers in exchange for Nils Lundkvist a few years ago. The Rangers later shipped the pick to Seattle as part of a deal for Alex Wennberg. Do GMs get a special little bonus point for reacquiring their own draft picks? I suppose it doesn’t hurt—particularly if you’re trying to offer sheet someone.
Nill obviously has to do certain things, given the contracts in place and the cap. We'll see what the roster actually look like in September. Right now, though, minus Ceci, Granlund and Marchment, you'd have to be a pollyanna to think the Stars are a better team than the one that just got eliminated two weeks ago. And, they lost one of the few physical players on the roster. Am I being too pessimistic, or am I being realistic?
We all loved Marchments spirit and enthusiasm and at his best he brought a uniquely awkward skating style that occasionally befuddled defensemen and his shots were so unpredictable that goalies had problems handling them. But, at his worst he was falling down, flopping like a soccer player shot by a sniper, or watching too often from the penalty box.
Better options are out there, Fogele or Brown come to mind… both can skate, both are fast, both can be physical.