Trading Jason Robertson Might Seem Crazy, but Here's Why the Dallas Stars Might Do It Anyway

It's a business, I'm told

You’ve surely heard by now: Jason Robertson’s name is being mentioned in trade talks, and it isn’t just hearsay. At least, that’s what we’re hearing, and what some folks are saying, like Jeff Marek (who tends to knows what he’s talking about).

Marek mentioned a few days back that the Stars might be considering trading Robertson in hopes of, among other things, recouping draft capital. That’s hardly a win-now move, but Marek doubled down on that perspective this week, too:

It’s crazy to think that the Stars could trade the player who has scored the second-most points in a regular season for the franchise before he even turns 26 years old, right?

Well, yes. It’s Froot Loops-in-your-underwear crazy, on the face of it. Jason Robertson is an incredible hockey player, and you are not wrong to react with an exhalation through pursed lips and a small shake of the head every time you hear people suggest the Stars would be better without it. Trading scoring talents like Robertson at 25 years old just isn’t something teams do. And when you heard Elliotte Friedman throw out his idea of what the Stars might do with the newfound cap space, you probably exhaled even more loudly.

These are specifics I don’t put as much stock in, personally. I think Granlund was a nice fit with Mikko Rantanen, but I don’t see Jim Nill dumping Robertson for draft picks just to re-sign a 5-foot-10, 60-point player creeping into his mid-thirties. If Granlund comes back to Dallas, it will be as a luxury, not a lynchpin.

(You’ll notice I’m purposely avoiding discussing what other players the Stars could acquire in any Robertson trade. You’re free to go hog-wild in the comments if you like, but that gets into idle speculation for the moment—though Marek did mention teams like Anaheim and Ottawa as potential trade partners, if you want a starting point.)

As for Friedman’s mention of the two Stars defensemen they might be trying to move, we’ll be talking more about the Matt Dumba and Ilya Lyubushkin contracts later this month. I’ll simply say here that Lyubushkin showed he can be a very useful part of this team, particularly on the penalty kill and next to Thomas Harley. I don’t see anywhere near the same urgency to move on from Lyubushkin that there probably is to detach from Dumba, unless the Stars have two clearly superior options for the right side of the defense. I don’t think they have those, right now.

Speaking of superior options, Robertson is a great player who has multiple 40-goal seasons under his belt, and he has one more year left at $7.75 million against the salary cap, with yet another year of team control after that, albeit with arbitration rights that will drive the price high for what would be his walk year. All that makes Robertson an extremely attractive piece for any team in the league, full stop. So, why would the Stars want to trade away such an attractive piece? Well, I’m not actually sure they want to trade him, outright. Yes, the Stars are in a cap crunch, but they can surely find a couple of ways to sort that situation out that don’t involve trading away their leading goal-scorer from last season.

Further, given that Matt Duchene—who just nipped Robertson in the points lead for Dallas last year—is himself a UFA, would Nill actually consider a 2025-26 season where Dallas jettisons its two top scorers in the same offseason? With the head coach position also vacant, there is every likelihood that next season’s Dallas Stars look radically different from this year’s as it stands; would they really want to do this much of a makeover in one offseason?

I think one point has to be underlined, bolded, and italicized though: if the Stars are indeed considering trading Robertson (as they seem to be), then having his name out there like this is a good¹ thing. Yes, really.

One only has to look at the Stars’ neighbors in American Airlines Center for an example of a GM who botched a trade for a fantastic young player by limiting his potential trade market by only talking to his good buddy in Los Angeles who promised him that he was a secret genius, also you’ll need to hide in the tunnels for a while after making the deal. If the Stars were going to trade Robertson, then you would absolutely want Dallas to invite a bidding war from across the league, as they seem to be doing. This is how you get the best possible return, in theory.

Now, Marek makes a key point in his video up there: trading Robertson, like trading Jonathan Huberdeau was for Calgary, only looks bad if the return for such a trade is bad. After all, Hubereau had just put up 115 points for Florida and led the entire league in assists. Then Florida traded him and right-shot defenseman Mackenzie Weegar for Matthew Tkachuk, and I don’t think anybody is looking at that as anything but a big win for Florida.

That’s not to say a similar trade is to be had for Nill—such trades are as a rare as they come—and it’s also not to say that the Stars couldn’t wind up being Calgary more than Florida in any such comparison. But the point is, a player like Robertson can make a lot of teams deal players they otherwise wouldn’t consider moving. And now is the time to do it, when his contract could very easily slot into a lot of team’s plans. Who wouldn’t want a player for whom 80 points is basically the floor of his production? Other than Dallas, I mean.

And with the salary cap ballooning even further in the coming years, any team that would be able to acquire Robertson’s deal this year could easily talk themselves into keeping him for years to come.

I don’t see Nill trading Robertson unless he gets a rich return indeed, but I think at least one team is sure to consider spending the assets to get him, because they see Robertson for what he is: a still-young player who is very, very good at doing one of the most important things hockey players can do, which is to say he gets on base scores. Knock him for doing things a little differently all you want, but the fact is, Robertson can do things most other players can’t do. He’s big, he can shoot, and he can pass. Players like that fit well on almost any NHL team.

I’ve talked to Robertson about his shootout prowess and his power play approach this year, as well as a few other things. And after every one of our conversations, I was struck by how much more thoroughly Robertson has thought about every aspect of his game than anyone else he is likely to speak with. He works as hard as any player in the league, maybe taking one off day (usually on the Fourth of July, when rinks are all closed) from skating all summer.

Robertson obsessively works on improving his craft, and he deserves all the credit in the world for showing why every other NHL team was foolish to let him drop to the second round of the draft. You can see the results of his work on the ice, as he’s constantly analyzing his defensive positioning and routes in the offensive zone and shot selection and a host of other things he’s not likely to share with the media.

Jason Robertson knows things and can do things that tons of players don’t and can’t, and that has resulted in 394 points in 376 games for the Dallas Stars. Robertson has been and will remain one of the most likable and productive players to begin his career with Dallas that you will ever see, full stop.

But these days, the Stars are feeling greedy in all the ways fans would want their NHL team to be. The Stars are clearly sick of running out of gas in the third round, as absurd a luxury as that is, and this year’s loss was particularly concerning, given how meekly the team fell to Edmonton. Thus, I find it easy to believe they’re looking to take another big swing rather than resting on the laurels of the Mikko Rantanen trade. Moving a player like Robertson can easily move your team backwards if you botch it, but you only tend to hit home runs if you swing big.

That’s the basic logic, I think, behind why you would even consider moving a player like Robertson, presuming you get a worthy return. But how did the Dallas Stars, specifically, get to this point? Why isn’t Robertson being locked up like Rantanen, or Wyatt Johnston, or Roope Hintz, or Esa Lindell?

What’s different about this situation?

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been three years since Jason Robertson signed a four-year extension in October of 2022.

Actually, when you say it like that, it sounds pretty easy to believe, because those are just dates and times. Math is trustworthy, when you can do it in your head, and when you don’t have to actually write “proofs” that my geometry textbook always seemed to protest just a bit too much.

When you think back to the negotiation that saw Robertson miss all of training camp and the NHL preseason, you remember just how fascinating that time was. Pete DeBoer was gearing up for his first season in Dallas, and Robertson was coming off his entry-level contract. Robertson had just put up 41 goals in Rick Bowness’s final year as Dallas’s head coach, but he’d managed just one goal in seven games against the number-one seeded Calgary Flames in a first-round exit. And that goal wasn’t exactly a snipe.

Still, Robertson was up for a new contract, and it was clear from the outset that Robertson and his agent, Pat Brisson, weren’t looking to do Dallas any favors. Negotiations dragged into training camp, then the preseason, and only got wrapped up on the day of the final preseason game of the year.

It didn’t hurt Robertson’s production one bit, as he proceeded to have the best season of his young career. His playoff run was once again a bit quiet, with Robertson tallying just two goals in 13 games over the first two rounds against Minnesota and Seattle before scoring five of Dallas’s 12 goals against Vegas. But given that three of those five goals came after Dallas was down 3-0² in the series, the fact that Robertson wound up with 18 points in 19 playoff games didn’t do as much as you’d think it would to shed his reptuation for being a much quieter playoff performer than a regular season one.

The next two seasons were less productive by Robertson’s lofty standards, as he posted 80 points apiece in what turned out to be Pete DeBoer’s final two years coaching the team. Still, Robertson was a key piece of both teams, and his resurgence this past year after recovering from foot surgery was a big part of how Dallas finished as high in the standings as they did, allowing them to host Game 7 against Colorado rather than play it on the road.

Robertson carried this team’s offense for large stretches in the second half, but his MCL injury in Game 82 meant he was always unlikely to be healthy enough to quiet his playoff critics for good. Sure enough, even though he scored four of Dallas’s five goals in Games 2-5 against Edmonton, I’ve heard from a number of folks in the hockey world who still see Robertson as a regular-season giant, but not someone who is likely to win a Conn Smythe Trophy, due to the nature of his game. To be clear, I see that as a dangerous oversimplification for a rare talent like Robertson, but playoff production is the harshest lens through which elite scorers are viewed, fairly or not.

Brisson, Robertson’s agent, also reprents Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, Jack Hughes, Quinn Hughes, John Tavares, and Matt Duchene. That makes it pretty clear that Robertson is not someone looking to make contract negotiations a quiet, civil affair. He believes in himself, as he well should, and he signed with an agency that knows how to get him the contract(s) that his elite scoring abilities deserve.

Now, Duchene showed for two years in a row that the player can still ask an agent to make something happen even if it means leaving money on the table, but Robertson is not in the same position in his career. When Robertson made sure to get a contract that both paid him equitably and set him up for another massive payday at the end of it (that being next summer), he made it clear that contract negotiations were going to be a hard-fought compromise, as business negotiations usually are when both sides are intent on achieving the best possible outcome. It was all professional, but it was not easy.

That all takes me back to a surprising place: Brenden Dillon, whose RFA negotiations were similarly tough back in 2014. Dillon was a key piece for an up-and-coming Dallas team, playing crucial defensive minutes on a Dallas team that had yet to recall John Klingberg. It seemed like a no-brainer for Dallas to lock down the tough, beloved defenseman, but that’s not how negotiations went. Eventually, Dillon was signed for just one year—also in October—which meant that another tough round of negotiations was going to be on the table for the following summer, when Dillon’s value was likely to be even higher.

Jim Nill is, as Matt Duchene said on the radio yesterday, one of the best people you could hope to meet in the hockey world, but he is also a general manager whose job it is to build the best team he can. And if you recall what happened next, I think it’s fair to say Nill made a ruthless decision to make the team better, trading Dillon for right-shot defenseman Jason Demers just a couple months later. It was a shocking deal, as Dillon was a unique sort of player on that Stars team, but it was one that made the Stars better, as Demers’ transition ability and right-shot-edness balanced out the Stars. The 2014-15 Stars team became a creative monster, albeit one undone by their lack of even marginally passable goaltending as the backup position couldn’t find any answers while Kari Lehtonen's downturn began in earnest.

(I actually had a chance to chat with Dillon earlier this year about that trade, so check out that piece if you haven’t read it yet.)

Dallas Stars Tuesday Roundup: A Quick Catch-Up with Former Dallas Star Brenden Dillon

The other piece of that Dillon/Demers trade that the Robertson situation reminds me of was an exchange of draft picks. In dealing Dillon, Dallas also exchanged a third-rounder for a second-round pick. In other words, Nill basically did with Dillon exactly the sort of thing that Marek and others are projecting he will do with Robertson (albiet at a smaller scale).

Robertson’s negotiations were a signal to Nill, I think, of where Robertson’s next contract was likely to land. The days of Robertson as a relative bargain have one year left on them, as his qualifying offer for the 2026-27 season would be $9.3 million. And while even that would probably not be a bad deal, it would mean Robertson would be headed towards unrestricted free agency at the end of it.

By trading Robertson right now, Nill would allow a much more competitive bidding environment. Again, that’s all because Robertson is such a desirable piece to begin with, and all the reasons other teams would want to acquire Robertson could be equally valid reasons for keeping him. But given how quiet Nill can keep a lot of his deals, I don’t think it’s an accident that Robertson’s name is out there as publicly as it is, right now. It’s good business, even if it might be concerning for Stars fans.

Really, from the moment Rantanen was acquired, I think Nill immediately got to work thinking about the future of the Dallas Stars beyond this season. Yes, he’s trying to build a Stanley Cup team, but he has always been one who hammers the importance of sustained, long-term success for a franchise, and he takes that responsibility to heart. So if I’m a betting man, I think it makes all the sense in the world that Robertson, if he is indeed traded, would be traded for a package that improves the Stars’ draft capabilities in this or next summer’s NHL draft, or both. And Nill would make any such deal with a plan in place to make sure he’s also not hurting the Stars’ chances in the short term—in fact, I think he and Tom Gaglardi would want to ensure the team could be even better as a result of such a deal, as hard to envision as that might be.

The idea scenario would be a package with both a great NHL piece for right now as well as some draft stock, like the Dillon/Demers deal. But there’s also a world in which Nill could trade Robertson for a huge haul of draft picks, only to turn around and exchange some of those picks for upgrades either this summer or at the trade deadline, once again. There are options, in other words. And by making Robertson pretty clearly available for such offers, at least, Nill is not limiting the scope of any such deal.

None of those options is going to sound as desirable for fans as keeping the player they’ve learned to love and root for, but as Nill said about the coaching change, sometimes the biggest risk can be sticking with the status quo. And if Robertson is the best piece to move in order to make a big upgrade to a team that looked solidly second-tier next to Edmonton and Florida, then Stars fans’ one consolation might be that they have about as trustworthy a GM making that trade as you could ask for.

1. Apparently Substack’s editor doesn’t have underlining as an easy option, but then again, I suppose underlining was primarily a primitive substitute for italics, so maybe this is like how Apple got rid of all their headphone jacks or whatever in the name of progress.

2. Pete DeBoer didn’t say which team he thought was the best of the three he’d coached in Dallas when he implicitly said he didn’t think it was this year’s, but you wonder if that 2022-23 team might have felt like the best. Joe Pavelski had that four-goal game against Seattle, Wyatt Johnston was confident and dangerous, and the Stars took Vegas to overtime in both Games 1 and 2 on the road. If Dallas wins just one of those, you wonder if Game 3 plays out completely differently, without Benn going after Stone, etc. etc. etc. Ah, well.