Better luck next year: The Dallas Stars really need a positive Jason Robertson solution

The Dallas Stars have had a quiet offseason, and that is starting to turn into a problem as they remain in a waiting game involving superstar forward Jason Robertson.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the Dallas Stars.

No matter who lost the opening round series between the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild, they were going to become the poster child for everything that is wrong with the NHL’s current playoff seeding format. The No. 2 and 3 teams in the Western Conference having to play in the first round, and one of them guaranteed to be eliminated, is a rough look for the format, even if it’s not the first time we’ve seen something like that happen. In the end, it was the Stars getting eliminated in six games, ending their run of consecutive trips to the Western Conference Final (at three) and resulting in a pretty steep step backwards for a team that has been in Stanley Cup or Bust mode for a couple of years now.

While I do sympathize with Dallas for being on the wrong end of the playoff format debate (because the seeding format IS kind of stupid and going back to a 1 vs. 8 format is preferred by just about everybody except for the one person in charge of making that decision), the harsh reality is that if you are going to be a Stanley Cup team you are going to have to beat good teams along the way. And there is even a school of thought that it might better to play that tougher team early on when your team is fresher and healthier.

It didn’t work out for the Stars.

Mostly because they weren’t fully healthy, and because Minnesota just simply out-played them.

It happens.

Even worse for the Stars, the offseason has been painfully quiet and so far only left more questions than solutions.

There is no objective way to argue that the roster, as it sits on July 14, is better than the one that opened the 2025-26 season.

Meaningful additions have been non-existent, while they also had to trade young forward Mavrik Bourque to the Nashville Predators to avoid a potential offer-sheet situation. That trade did give them the opportunity to dump Ilya Lybushkin’s contract, but with only draft picks (second-and third-round) coming back, there is no immediate upgrade to the roster. Only more subtractions.

The Stars thought they had a blockbuster trade for Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski (the 2025-26 Norris Trophy winner), a move that would have filled their long-standing need for a right-shot defenseman, while also saving them a little bit of salary cap space to go toward the roster by sending defenseman Thomas Harley the other way.

The only problem: Werenski vetoed that trade by using his no-trade protections and sent the Stars back to the drawing board for their offseason.

At the moment, pretty much everything is on hold until they get some sort of a solution to the Jason Robertson situation.

Robertson is the Stars’ best player, is one of the best forwards in the league, and is currently unsigned as a restricted free agent. He has an arbitration hearing set for later this month (negating the possibility of an offer-sheet) while the two sides continue to work toward a long-term deal.

But what if the Stars can not pay Robertson what he wants?

What if they do not want to pay him what he wants and can not get him to budge in their direction?

It would potentially leave the Stars in a situation where they have him for just one more year following arbitration, and then stuck with the possibility of him leaving as an unrestricted free agent following the 2026-27 season. That would certainly help the 2026-27 team, but it would absolutely create an all-or-nothing season where the pressure would be on to win, and win big.

The only other alternative: A trade.

The Stars reportedly had a Robertson trade completed with the Seattle Kraken before the draft, likely involving the No. 7 overall pick, but that fell through when Robertson turned down a lucrative contract extension because he did not want to play in Seattle. Along with that, there was a report that Robertson would have also had no interest in playing for the St. Louis Blues after they also showed an interest in acquiring him.

That’s going to be the potential hurdle in any trade here. Any team that tries to acquire him is going to want to do so with the confidence they can get him signed long-term, and given the Seattle experience that’s obviously going to take more than just a lot of money.

Trading a player of Robertson’s caliber is going to be impossible to win for Dallas given how good he is. The Stars would almost certainly be giving up the best player in the trade, and that is usually (emphasis on usually, because there are exceptions; it just requires some luck, some strong planning, and an aggressive front office that push all of the right buttons) a losing proposition. Add in the fact that Robertson controls a lot of the cards here and it is not going to be an easy path.

Let’s talk a little more about that, as well as everything that went right and wrong for the Stars during the 2025-26 season, as well as what is ahead for this season.

There are some players they need more from.

They also need to figure out what is going to happen with Robertson and his future.

What went right