Game Day Guide: Stars vs Kraken

First Shift 🏒

Maybe the most interesting thing about the 2025-26 Dallas Stars is how much they have changed since last season.

Yes, the firing of Pete DeBoer and the hiring of Glen Gulutzan is the biggest topic of discussion, but even the roster is significantly different. By trading for Rantanen and giving him an eight-year contract that averages $12 million a season, Dallas created the need for some salary cap adjustments.

So Mikael Granlund, Cody Ceci and Evgenii Dadonov had to be allowed to explore free agency, and Mason Marchment and Matt Dumba had to be traded. When you consider the money alone, that’s a significant amount of NHL talent that went out the door.

Granlund signed a three-year deal with Anaheim that averages $7 million per season. Ceci inked a four-year contract with LA that averages $4.5 million. Marchment, who was traded to Seattle and will return for the first time Sunday, is in the last year of a four-year deal that averages $4.5 million, and Dadonov is a bargain at $1 million for New Jersey.

“It’s a tough business, and you have to make tough decisions,” said Stars GM Jim Nill. “Those are very good players.”

Marchment tallied 22 goals for the Stars last season. Dadonov had 20. Granlund had 22 goals combined with San Jose and Dallas last season and added 10 points (5 goals, 5 assists) in the playoffs.

That’s some real scoring depth that helped make the Stars the third best scoring team in the league at 3.35 goals per game. That impact has been felt this year, as Dallas ranks 19th at 3.00 goals per game, but that’s part of the moving target of building a team.

Rantanen leads the Stars with 21 points and is tied for third in league scoring. 22-year-old Johnston is surging close behind 19 points. Meanwhile, young players like Thomas Harley and Mavrik Bourque are hoping to step up, and depth players like Steel, Colin Blackwell and Radek Faksa are expected to take bigger roles as the season progresses.

To be fair, the Stars added Granlund and Ceci at the trade deadline, so they were without them for the first half of last season, so maybe the changes aren’t as drastic as you think.

But comparing this roster to the one that made it to the Western Conference Final is, in a word, interesting.