I was in a good friend’s wedding this past Saturday. After the ceremony and photos were finished, I was able to get back to the reception in time to finally eat some food. (What is it about weddings that makes one so ravenously hungry?)
So, I got my plate filled up in the buffet line, but I couldn’t make it more than ten feet back without running into someone I knew, and so conversation superseded ingestion for a while. Finally, I wound up taking my plate and heading into the kitchen, where I had a moment to eat in peace. That moment lasted until I got halfway through a chicken salad croissant, when someone saw me and said, “So, what’s up with Jason Robertson?”
That anecdote was just to illustrate how this is still a topic causing Stars fans some anxiety no matter where they are. So, let’s see if we can clear some more of the remaining fog between Robertson and the Stars as they hurtle towards some kind of clarity this weekend.
Barring any trades, Jason Robertson and the Dallas Stars will have a new contract by about this time next week, if not sooner. Per PuckPedia, Robertson’s salary arbitration hearing is scheduled for Saturday, July 25.
Robertson is one of six remaining RFAs (as of this writing) who have not yet settled on a new contract with his team, and while many players can wind up settling right up until the beginning of the hearing, Jim Nill generally prefers to get things wrapped up sooner. For things to have gotten this far (with Mavrik Bourque having to be moved in the meantime) suggests that the two sides really have been just too far apart for any reasonable compromise to be possible. Thus, a third-party will have to resolve the situation.
I don’t claim to know what Jim Nill is thinking, but a couple situations from his Stars tenure have stuck with me when it comes to how these sorts of negotiations can go. So at risk of invoking irrelevant anecdotes, let’s touch on a couple of times Nill and a Stars player had to grind out a deal in the past, because I think it’s instructive.
Defenseman Brenden Dillon didn’t have arbitration rights in 2014. Mike Heika reported at the time that Dillon and his agent were looking for a two-year deal at $3.8 million coming out of his ELC—around the same AAV Cody Eakin had just signed for (and with the very same agent).
But the Stars weren’t looking to go that rich, it turned out. Dillon would eventually sign a one-year deal with Dallas for $1.25 million in early October, right before the season began. And just over a month later, Dillon would be traded away in a package for Jason Demers.
While I don’t think the way negotiations between Dillon and Dallas went was the reason Dillon was moved, I have always wondered if Dillon might have stayed in Dallas longer if he had been able to get signed to a longer-term deal. Instead, things went a different way. When a team and player don’t see eye-to-eye on the player’s value, it can be an indication that their paths will diverge before too long.
For contrast, how about a situation where Nill did settle with a player on the cusp of a hearing? Because there was another tough negotiation in 2014 where the Stars almost had to go to a third-party arbitrator, only for the Stars and a certain Antoine Roussel to settle on a long-term deal at the last minute, avoiding arbitration in the nick of time with a four-year, $2 million AAV contract.
Obviously, Robertson’s deal is going to be a much, much trickier one to navigate, but hey: precedent is precedent. There’s one other tough negotiation that I always think of when it comes to arbitration and the Stars, though. And in fact, it’s the only time I can remember Jim Nill actually going to salary arbitration during his Stars’ tenure.