Will Jason Robertson stay in Dallas?

The saga between star winger Jason Robertson and the Dallas Stars continues, as the American goalscorer is now just one day away from hitting the market as a restricted free agent.

After a 96-point season that saw him finish tied for fourth in the league with 45 goals, Robertson has an opportunity to cash in with a huge long term contract as the salary cap jumps, but the Stars’ complicated salary cap situation has caused this to take several surprising turns.

Robertson reportedly declined a deal from the Seattle Kraken that would have paid him $15 million per year after the two teams had agreed on trade compensation, suggesting that Robertson would prefer to return to the Stars, but can Dallas GM Jim Nill find a deal that works for both player and team?

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed where the Robertson saga could end up with the offer sheet threat beginning to loom on Wednesday.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Obviously, Jason Robertson continues to be a very, very big part of the conversation. Pierre LeBrun tweeting yesterday, the Stars and Robertson, they’re still trying in contract talks, trying to find a middle ground. Emily Kaplan of ESPN had a quote come out the other day of she still thinks the most likely outcome here is that Jason Robertson goes back to Dallas. Dallas is in their win-now, competitive, they’re in that window, right? So I really don’t think it makes sense for them to go and move on from Robertson. Obviously, the Seattle thing fell apart at the last minute, but one of the ripple effects of that Seattle trade was that Dallas was just going to probably take whatever assets they got from Seattle and flip it, and I wonder if that market cools a little bit and if it’s no longer getting picks in what was this past weekend’s draft, it’s getting future assets for next year’s draft and even further down the line. If it gets even harder to maybe flip those assets, if Dallas doesn’t just say, “All right, you know what? You want $2 million more than we’re offering you. Let’s just cut this thing down the middle and kill this storyline now.”

Carter Hutton: Yeah, it’d be nice because again, you’re not really just replacing what he brings too offensively, right? I know they have a lot of pieces, whether it’s Rantanen or Wyatt Johnson, guys that can produce, but like Jason Robertson wants what he wants at this point, right? Because we’ve seen the offers on the table. We think about Seattle. I had actually a conversation the other day with a player in Seattle about what is it like to live there? What is it like to play? For them, they think the big factor is the tax coming in, like the millionaire’s tax, how he’d lose an additional $12 million off that contract if he was to sign it. So I think for Jason Robertson now, it’s about staying where you want to be and meeting in the middle. Again, at the end of the day, when you add in the tax and you add in everything else that goes into it, he’s going to be a very rich man wherever he ends up playing. Hopefully it’s with the Dallas Stars… For superstars, there’s always a reason why they want to keep you in that market, but I think just knowing what your value is tricky, right? Because you want to go out there and see what’s out there, but at the same time, you got to make sure you take care of numero uno.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…