It’s not officially the end of an era, but the hourglass has been flipped on the careers of the Stars’ most prominent superstars.
In the case of Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, “superstar” is a well-earned label. Each ranks top five in franchise scoring: Benn with 907 points, Seguin with 667. They have been the Stars’ identity ever since they teamed up upon Seguin getting traded to Dallas in 2013. First, that meant serving as fixtures on the top line, ushering what was then a new era with Valeri Nichushkin, then alongside veterans like Patrick Sharp and Alex Radulov. In time they emerged as the faces of the franchise, with mega deals to match. For much of the last decade, Benn and Seguin didn’t merely set the tone for Dallas hockey. They were Dallas hockey.
We know their stories so well by now. Starting with Benn, it’s hard to envision a sports figure so simultaneously quiet, yet controversial. The Canadian left winger was at the center of the most heinous rant by management directed at its own player you’ll probably ever see. Opponents can’t stand him, sometimes for totally valid reasons. Then there was that whole Vegas debacle in 2023. Of course, there was also that big Art Ross win, and as far as the Knights go, a bit of redemption for Benn this postseason. He inspires loyalty from his teammates for all the figurative and often literal fighting he does. And now, at age 35, 15 years into his tenure in Dallas, he’s entering the last year of his contract.
That’s one theoretical year left with the Robin to his Batman. Seguin has followed a less controversial path. Through no fault of his own, he’s simply not the player he once was; it’s a journey documented in grueling detail by The Athletic’s Saad Yousef. There are times when the lattice of who Seguin used to be shows up. But even in moments where he’s ready to shine, like the breakaway against Vegas, the hill he’s skating up gets steeper and steeper. Once, he could deliver a 70-point season in his sleep. Over the past five seasons, he is averaging 49 points, with money usually on the under. Seguin, who turns 33 in January, is guaranteed to be in Dallas longer than Benn by virtue of his contract expiring in 2026-27. But his time as an impact player has even less sand than the granules timing Benn’s potential departure.
Of course, “potential” is doing heavy lifting here. Just last week, general manager Jim Nill told The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun in regards to Benn’s contract status that “we’ll figure something out. He’s going to be a Dallas Star for life.” Whether or not he’s right, there are plenty of reasons to ponder a formal or informal end to the Benn/Seguin duo. Because even if Benn does the widely expected and re-signs on reduced terms, it will mark the conclusion of the concurrent Benn and Seguin megadeals: the period of time when the era-defining duo was at its most scrutinized. This season is the end of something.
Which is a good thing. Benn and Seguin aren’t the most interesting stories at this point in their careers—not because they’re uninteresting players, but because the expectations have finally dissipated. It was ages ago that we were right here, on this site, yelling “all right, already!” to Stars management. In case that thesis was forgotten, there’s nothing wrong with criticism. Criticism is good, and Dallas, more than most hockey organizations, has leveraged internal criticism into becoming the draft’s crystal ball (so much so that other teams poached one of the front office’s best oracles). But what we saw from Jim Lites and (to a much lesser extent) Tom Gaglardi weren’t critiques so much as tantrums.
The Stars’ switch in drafting philosophy is not an adjacent side note because it revealed how much management was never powerless to help their two stars. Instead of asking Benn and Seguin to do more with very little, the draft gave them a lot. Free agency and a shift in coaching philosophy gave them a lot, too. An overly conservative system and Denis Gurianov turned into Pete DeBoer’s modern attack and the 23rd pick in 2021, Wyatt Johnston, who most likely would go first overall in a re-draft. Benn and Seguin aren’t rejuvenated because they want it more, as Lites famously implied. They’re rejuvenated because an aggressive system is leveraging their strengths, and they’re now complemented by elite players instead just each other’s aging bodies
This is where things get tricky. Low expectations do not mean no expectations. Benn’s last two years have been his most productive since the 2017-18 season. With 138 points since 2022, he will have yet another opportunity to continue his unlikely late-career momentum. The story before the beginning of last season was that Benn would come back down to earth, with The Athletic calling him a top-10 regression candidate. I would say that projection held true, but it didn’t hit as hard as Benn hit back. Although he cooled off in the regular season, he had a monster 2024 playoffs, tallying 15 points in 19 games.
Seguin is in a different bind. Unlike Benn, he isn’t held up by two budding superstars and the Stars’ top power play unit. Nonetheless, his chemistry with Matt Duchene and Mason Marchment was significant enough to make the team’s forward depth the envy of the league. The trio has an underwhelming second half to bounce back from, but whatever they do or don’t accomplish, it’s hard to imagine them sputtering along the way Dallas’ secondary scoring did when it featured an aging Jason Spezza with Mattias Janmark and Devin Shore.
All of this raises the question that’ll be asked internally at some point: if Benn and Seguin remain valuable, what will be the cost of keeping them? Conversely, what’s the price of losing them, whether or not that value wanes? I thought about this as I scrolled through Twitter the other day. Good man and semi-active writer Juraj Kralik projected a theoretical 20-man roster in 2026, assuming a $97 million ceiling with Benn re-signed.
My gut says this is not a good look. Not only that, but this potential roster also assumes an Ilya Lyubushkin buyout. We don’t need to get lost in the weeds of all that, though.
What’s important is that whatever Benn’s value, bringing him back will have its own cost, especially when you consider the NHL is starting to develop an appetite for offer sheets, as St. Louis demonstrated to Edmonton. (For those wondering about a Seguin buyout, please stop. He has $4.8 million remaining in total base salary, per PuckPedia. If the Stars went that route, they would save less than $1 million across the next two seasons. In other words, it’s not an option.)
I kind of hope this is the last hurrah for Benn and Seguin. And it has nothing to do with their value. As far as depth goes, Dallas is privileged to have them in the passenger seat. Benn’s captaincy is priceless. That doesn’t mean the Stars need to hold onto it all costs given their expected growth as the Western Conference’s elite. The “jerk” part of that argument is also this: why hold onto the symbols that haven’t yielded a Stanley Cup?
That’s the difference between a team such as Dallas, and teams such as Pittsburgh and Washington, who have done everything in their power to keep Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. It hasn’t worked for either of them. But it hasn’t worked because those teams don’t have replacements for their aging stars. Benn and Seguin have been replaced twice over, with Roope Hintz and Jason Robertson giving way to Johnston and Logan Stankoven. It’s hard to envision Benn still in the picture if he’s making the kind of money that might hamper the ability of the new core to lead the way. Sure, everybody wants to win and Benn may take a discount if he has another 60-plus point season. But everyone also wants to feel respected and paid what they’re worth, so whatever Benn’s discount, it won’t be a figure as low as what I’ve seen floating on social media. (If Benn had been extended this summer, Evolving-Hockey calculated his next contract at $5.1 million in annual average salary for three years. That’s a $4.4 million reduction on his current annual rate of $9.5 million—significant, but hardly fourth-line money.)
If Benn and Seguin were to win a Cup together, that wouldn’t change a thing. Nor should it. That’s the headspace everyone needs to occupy at a time when the new core has already taken the wheel. But we’ve still got one more season of the Benn and Seguin era as we know it. Given the number of forwards who have surpassed them in the pecking order, they’ll only have so much power to script their ending. But maybe they’ll get to add just the right punctuation.
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