Jason Robertson is here to stay … for the start of the 2026-27 NHL season, at least
After months of stalled negotiations the Dallas Stars agreed to a deal with their star forward, though it wasn’t what many suspected it would be: Robertson signed one-year deal rather than a long-term extension that possibly could’ve kept the 27-year-old in Dallas for the rest of his career
The Dallas sports radio waves don’t usually have much Stars to talk about this time of year, but the long-awaited Robertson signing had some of our local experts pondering what more it would take for the two sides to agree to a long-term deal — and if that’s even what both parties actually want
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Hear from The Ticket’s Bob Sturm, George Dunham and Craig Miller talking through the Robertson deal below
The Ticket’s “The Musers”
George Dunham: “This is a good thing because he’s gonna remain a Star and begin the season as a Star. There seems to be a lot of water under the bridge here, listening to his comments [in his Wednesday news conference]. It works out at least temporarily, and who knows, maybe he plays the rest of his career here in Dallas — but it just seems kind of tense, doesn’t it?
“A [trade] almost happened, the Stars were ready to go that way after [Robertson] turned down their original offer. I guess it could work out and there’s a good chance he could be here for a long time, but this seems to me to be very temporary. I don’t know, I would classify the relationship between the Stars and Robo as somewhat strained.”
Craig Miller: “I wonder if teams, and I’m putting the Stars in here, do they look at [the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes] and think, ‘We’re really good, we’ve been to the conference finals three times in four years… do we just keep running this back?’ And does that make them more likely to keep Robo?”
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The Ticket’s “The Hardline”
Bob Sturm:
“The two biggest obstacles to a long marriage with Jason Robertson are:
“No. 1: The team as presently constituted isn’t good enough to win a Stanley Cup. And that one’s still a question mark, and nobody’s saying that’s Robo’s fault. But it is saying he’s the Last of the Mohicans who hasn’t been married to the Stars. So the Stars are assembling this group, and any ability to sort of materially change this core sort of rests with [Robertson] and their cap room moving forward. Which, heck, [their plan] could include Connor McDavid in two summers. There’s a number of things it could include if you don’t lock in this core, and why would you lock in a core that’s not even close to good enough to compete for a Stanley Cup, based on what we’ve most recently seen?
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“Item No. 2, which has been a stumbling block, is cap room. The cap room issue, because of this one-year extension, kind of has gone away. To where now, as opposed to saying, ‘We have to trade Mavrik Bourque because we have no room to sign him.’ By next summer, with [Tyler] Seguin, who’s your third-highest-paid player, I don’t know if people know that. We love Tyler Seguin, but he’s now making more than everybody but Mikko and [Thomas] Harley, and now I guess Robo. … Seguin’s in his final year and then he’ll come off the books. The cap keeps going up, that’s a big boost, and then Seguin’s 10 [million] comes off. … That hurdle being gone, that sort of removes the [cap] issue. So now I guess we’ll find out if Tom Gagliardi and Jim Nill actually value [Robertson] as the, ‘Let’s make you our highest paid player and bet on you carrying us to a Stanley Cup with help from your friends.'”
Listen to the full segment here.
