The Dallas Stars have been working to improve this offseason in hopes of getting back to the Stanley Cup Finals once again. However, the team has also had another focus this offseason: free up enough cap room for the 2021-22 offseason when the entry-level contract of defenseman Miro Heiskanen is up. The 21-year-old will be a restricted free agent, and the Stars would like to lock him up long-term.
Heiskanen has been a key reason for the dominant defense that the Stars have used to push their way to the top. The 21-year-old might have posted only 35 points in 68 games last season, but his defense is what makes him special. So it is critical to get the blueliner signed to a long-term deal. To free up cap room, the Stars absorbed the full amount of their cap overages ($3.05M) for next year — as opposed to splitting it between the next two years, saving them $1.52M in cap room for 2021-22 — chose not to buy out any players to keep extra cap penalties away from that year.
Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News writes that assuming the plan is to sign Heiskanen to a long-term deal, it likely will cost them somewhere between $8M-$9M if you compare his deal to that of Ottawa Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot, who signed his long-term deal a year ago with an $8M AAV. Now with newer contracts such as Vegas’ Alex Pietrangelo and Nashville’s Roman Josi, the market seems set for Heiskanen when the two sides can begin negotiating at the start of the 2020-21 season.
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