National Football League

Dallas Stars Could Execute Unheard Of Trade

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 7:56 p.m. ET

Fansided, Tom Dorsa/FanSided via Blackout Dallas

A common transaction in major North American sports is trading your organization’s best player in order to acquire young, talented phenoms to center a rebuild around. The Dallas Stars could hypothetically pull off a move such as this.

The Dallas Stars are in the midst of a unprecedented 2016-17 campaign, in which the returning Central Division champions are nowhere close to winning their second straight divisional crown.

A team with three 30+ goal-scorers last season (Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza) a Norris Trophy contender (John Klingberg finished 6th in voting for the league’s best defenseman), and electric special teams units (4th-best power play at 22.1%, 10th-best penalty kill at 82.3%) has seemingly fizzled away for the year.

Perhaps, it’s a down year for a team with a bright future. Or, it’s the beginning of another era top-heavy with disappointment and despair.

How do you break this cycle of a team with a mostly depleted level of confidence and belief? Well, tradition in sports states that trading your best player can have a positive impact on rebuilding. That strategy and the effectiveness it can have is best exemplified within the limits of the Dallas Metroplex.

The Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League once possessed the rights to Herschel Walker, a player who came from the failing USFL, and eventually shared running back roles with Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Tony Dorsett.

Walker became, at that time, just the 10th player in NFL history to amass more than 2,000 accumulative rushing and receiving yards in a single season, the 1988 campaign in which he had become a one-man wrecking crew for America’s Team.

In 1989, at the height of his NFL career, the Cowboys traded Walker to the Minnesota Vikings for a total of five players and six future draft picks. Also, the five players traded by Minnesota were tied to conditional draft picks.

This all led to Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland, Kevin Smith, Darren Woodson, and many others, which proved to be a turning point in the rise of the Cowboys to the NFL’s top echelon, as they subsequently won three Super Bowl titles over a span of four seasons.

It was what the Dallas Stars, according to many social media-savvy supporters, could do and should do. While I don’t believe Dallas should attempt a groundbreaking deal like this, the thought of it is extremely interesting to dissect.

To recap, the Dallas Stars could trade Tyler Seguin, undoubtedly their best offensive player, whom they acquired in 2013 from the Bruins. Step back and absorb that one for a second.

Just like the football team in Big D did with the dynamic Herschel Walker, the Stars could do with the consistently elite Seguin. Dallas’s farm system is running dry, and their draft picks are currently awhile away from developing, which means for the 24-year-old with 400 career NHL points could potentially be set aside in exchange for prospects and high draft picks.

The Dallas Stars’ number-one center is signed for two more years after the 2016-17 campaign at $6-million for 17-18 and $6.5-million for 18-19, which makes a player of his skillset and potential extremely affordable for different clubs.

Given the nature of contracts given to fellow centers Jonathan Toews ($10.5 million per year) and Anze Kopitar ($10 million per year), you’ll certainly get a bang for your buck with Seguin.

Dallas could deal him to a team like the Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings, Toronto Maple Leafs, or Winnipeg Jets – teams that are currently in the later stage of rebuilding: trying to establish veteran help with skilled young players, which each team have a lot of.

Imagine Dallas trading Seguin for multiple first round picks, and/or rising NHL superstars to help the Jamie Benn and John Klingberg-led core. It’s nearly inconceivable, but the benefits could double that of having the 2nd overall pick in 2010’s Draft.

By the way, I think this proposal is ridiculous, but you just can’t put stuff like this past Jim Nill.