Late last night, the Dallas Stars announced they had acquired forward Max Domi and AHL goaltender Dylan Wells from the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for goaltender Anton Khudobin and a second round pick in the 2025 draft. It was announced moment after they had just defeated Chicago, 5-2. While the move was rumored prior to puck drop, the team held off to avoid the awkward “pack up your stall and walk across the hall to the opposing team’s locker room” that inevitably would have ensued had the trade call gone down before the game.
That would have been funny for fans and potentially could have created a viral moment that surely would have been talked about all over social media and sports talk shows this morning, but not doing the trade right before the game kept Domi from being put in a weird place having to face his old team mere hours after departing from them. Players remember how organizations treat them and pay attention to what organizations do around the league. This is one of those things that will be presumably noted and remarked upon behind closed doors.
While Evgenii Dadonov is a good addition in terms of depth, Domi is the big get for general manager Jim Nill at the deadline this season. Adding Domi to the forward group for a potential deep playoff run fills one need that the team desperately lacked: a playmaker.
Dallas adds another playmaker to go with Dadonov. pic.twitter.com/VYQrDoLXQi
— Corey Sznajder (@ShutdownLine) March 2, 2023
That should be a boon for guys like Tyler Seguin in the top six, and could help get a guy like Mason Marchment off his historically cold streak by relieving some pressure to perform in the top six right now.
The thing this move does not do is hamstring the Stars in the future by taking on a contract with term. Domi gets a little bit of a tryout on a playoff team, and the Stars get the ability to walk away from him in the summer for free if he doesn’t fit in the system, the locker room, or the future cap structure with the big contracts of Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, et. al. picking up in the upcoming seasons.
This also gives Khudobin the potential chance to get back to the NHL (if there is a team where he could get ice time it’s likely a bottom team that isn’t totally concerned with the outcome of games down the stretch) and clears his cap space from the deck. Khudobin will go down in Stars lore for his improbable backstop of the Stars in the bubble Stanley Cup Final run, his quirky humor, and his ability to be an ideal backup goaltender in the NHL when the team needed it.
The acquisition of Dylan Wells helps shore up the Texas Stars’ goaltender depth as they are also looking at a long playoff run as well.
With the trade deadline at 2 PM CT today, it’s possible that the Stars have done all they intend to. Maybe there’s a depth defenseman move to be acquired, but generally, it feels like Dallas is done tweaking their lineup.
No practice scheduled today for the Stars, so we’ll have to wait until warmups tomorrow against the Colorado Avalanche to see how the lines could be reconstructed. It’s possible they could look something like this:
Jason Robertson – Roope Hintz – Joe Pavelski
Jamie Benn – Wyatt Johnston – Evgenii Dadonov
Max Domi – Tyler Seguin – Mason Marchment
Ty Dellandrea – Radek Faksa – Fredrik Olofsson
Heiskanen-Miller
Suter-Lundkvist
Lindell-Hakanpää
Hanley
Oettinger
Wedgewood
Currently Injured: Luke Glendening, Joel Kiviranta