After Matt Duchene was bought out by Nashville on the eve of free agency, he was forced to turn the page immediately. Emotionally, he needed more time. Practically, he didn’t have time. One thing Duchene did have was options.
“What made it easy was just the conversations I had with the team here (in Dallas) with Jim (Nill) and Pete DeBoer and some of the boys,” Duchene said. “The other options were incredible, too.”
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Lost in the dialogue of what the Stars are getting in Duchene — a top-six talent two seasons removed from a career-high 86-point campaign who can play center or either wing position — is what Duchene, who signed for one year and $3 million, is getting in Dallas.
A chance to win. A desirable place to live. An organization with structure.
A destination by choice.
Last Saturday, Nill spoke about how excited the Stars were to land a player like Duchene. On Thursday, Duchene talked about how excited he was to join the Stars for a laundry list of reasons. The former happens every year with every player but the latter — a high-caliber player considering himself lucky to end up in Dallas — doesn’t happen all the time. But it’s becoming a regular occurrence.
After 13 years in San Jose, the Sharks ushered Joe Pavelski out the door in 2019. After 14 years in Anaheim, the Ducks bought out Corey Perry in 2019. After nine years, the Wild bought out Ryan Suter in 2021. To a lesser extent, this year, Evgenii Dadonov put together a solid end to the season and strong postseason, but didn’t even bother testing the market on July 1.
These players, among others, had other options. All of them, Duchene included, chose to come to Dallas or stay there. In fact, Duchene’s interest in Dallas goes back to 2019, when he was an unrestricted free agent.
“We checked in with a few other teams, Dallas being one of them, right at the beginning,” Duchene said. “Once it was not a feasible option, we really focused our attention (to Nashville). The cap also at that point only went up ($2 million) that year. There wasn’t the same space that people thought they were going to have.”
There is no linear formula for what makes a team a destination spot, because players have different motives. For some, the opportunity to play near home would give a leg up to a certain team. Given the sparse NHL talent being produced in Dallas, the Stars don’t hold much of an advantage there. For other players, there is something to prestige, playing for an Original Six team or one with a long, stories history. The Stars, who arrived in Dallas in the 1990s and went through some lean years as recently as a decade ago, don’t check that box either.
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Duchene’s recruitment process offers a glimpse into where the foundation of the Stars’ advantage really begins.
“With (Jamie Benn) being such an amazing captain, I wanted to get his perspective and talk to him,” Duchene said. “I played with him at the Olympics, so we know each other a little bit. I talked to (Jason) Robertson as well. I asked him a lot of hockey specific questions. Obviously, he had a huge year last year, kind of put himself in pretty elite company with what he did and who he is (with) at the current time. Just wanted to know, like, hey what contributed to your huge year and try to visualize myself being a part of that. We had a really in depth talk. Everything he talked about was great.
“Then, Tyler Seguin reached out to me after. I’ve known Seggy since we were 10 years old. He’s a year younger than me, but we crossed paths quite a bit when we were younger, summer hockey and then played against each other. Joe Pavelski reached out to me (Thursday).”
The primary voices in the recruitment process were Benn and Robertson. Benn is a soon-to-be 34-year-old captain who is well-respected by the players who end up his teammates, and who just enjoyed a career resurgence. Robertson is a charismatic soon-to-be 24-year-old who just finished top-five in Hart voting this season after shattering the franchise record for points in a season. Those two players are representative of what the Stars organization offers incoming players on a grander scale, which is a mix of older and younger talent that carries a structured leadership framework that one can just slide right into and talents, of varying degrees, that one can just plug in and play with.
“The fact that you can step in right away and play with a guy like (Seguin) is pretty special,” Duchene said. “There are not many places in the league that (offers) to play with a guy like that, play with a guy like Jamie Benn, play with a guy like Jason Robertson, Joe Pavelski, (Roope) Hintz, Dadonov, on and on and on, right?”
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Miro Heiskanen, Wyatt Johnston, Jake Oettinger. To Duchene’s point, the list goes on. The other pull now as become DeBoer. It’s important to players to enjoy who they’re playing with but it’s just as important to enjoy who they’re playing for.
“Talking to guys, they loved the style of play they played last year,” Duchene said. “I think that is such a big thing. Everyone looks at roster, everybody looks at goaltending and all of that stuff, but if you’re not playing the right style of game, it can kind of be wasted, at times. I know Pete’s such a great coach. I’ve known him for a long time. Just talking to the boys, that was part of the process, just asking how they felt about that and they loved it and said nothing but great things. It made that decision very easy for me.
“Playing offense is fun and it’s an offensive league now. Back in the start of my career, guys didn’t even get 80 points and now there are guys getting 120. It’s changed a lot, and teams are scoring a lot more. I think that was an area where they could win the 2-1 game for a long, long time and now they can win the 6-5 game. That makes them really, really dangerous. I’ve always been more of a fan of the 6-5 game than the 2-1 game, so I’m excited to come in. I love playing offense, obviously, and hopefully come in and fit into that.”
On the hockey side, Nill deserves perhaps the most credit as the architect of the entire hockey operation. The Stars were in a potentially tough situation in late 2018, when the top of their own organization publicly went after the two faces of the franchise in Benn and Seguin. It’s the sort of thing that could have made free agents wary about joining the team, yet less than a year later, Pavelski and Perry signed on.
Nill has a reputation as one of the nicest men in hockey and there are examples of that throughout his tenure, from handling the untimely firing of coach Jim Montgomery to executing lower-level trades like Fredrik Olofsson and Jacob Peterson in order to do right by the player. Those things may get lost in the shuffle, but over time, they become the fabric of the hockey operation for a franchise.
The hockey reasons are important, and can ebb and flow over time. But there’s a non-hockey side to these decisions for players as well, particularly older players with families. Texas having no state income tax is a huge draw. But also, think about the life stage that guys like Pavelski, Perry, Suter and Dadonov were in. Duchene is no different.
“To have almost a sister city here in Dallas (compared to Nashville) is, I mean — when you’re making this decision, you’re looking first,” Duchene said. “But at the same time, now that I’ve got three kids and a wife, you’ve got to really take them into consideration. My biggest goal in moving here is to make it seamless and easy for her as possible. Then, the hockey part is on me. That’s kind of how I’m looking at it. I’m dividing it into two parts. Dallas just checked off every box for us.”
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Family is an off-ice priority in choosing the market they want to play in, but there are elements of appeal for players as well. Duchene is an Ontario native, so he knows what a traditional hockey market looks like. He knows the sort of media scrutiny and public pressure that comes in those places, not to mention things like a certain level of popularity out in public places that some players find uncomfortable.
In Dallas, those things exist in a much more diminished state. Players can play the game they love, make millions doing it and still go out to dinner on a Saturday night without being bothered too much. Team ownership may not always be a fan of that reality, but there is a certain pull that has for some players, especially older ones, as they make their decisions. Younger players may be more privy to a splashier, more exotic setting, but you don’t have to worry too much about trying to lull them into signing externally when you’re producing them at a factory pace internally due to good drafting.
Duchene’s decision to come to Dallas isn’t terribly dissimilar from not just Pavelski’s decision to come to Dallas in 2019 but then to re-up twice after his initial deal. It’s a validation of the Stars’ culture and direction. The team obviously wants these players but it’s not a complicated sell they have to make. Simply being the Dallas Stars has been good enough.
(Photo of Matt Duchene: Timothy T. Ludwig / USA Today)
