Stars Sign Matt Duchene To Four-Year Extension

The Stars have signed center Matt Duchene to a four-year extension, per a team announcement. It’s worth $4.5MM per season for a total value of $18MM.

Duchene could have tested the market as one of the top unrestricted free agent centers available, but he’ll instead opt to stay in a Dallas market where he’s excelled as a key top-six contributor over the past two years. In doing so, he takes a significant discount on his market value, at least on a per-year basis. A four-year offer at a much higher price may not have been out there for the 34-year-old, but AFP Analytics projected a three-year deal for Duchene to fall in the $7MM range per season if he hit the open market.

The 2009 No. 3 overall pick is coming off a spectacular 2024-25 campaign. While the Stars scored the third-most goals in the league, their offense was largely generated by committee. Duchene was the only Dallas player who played at least 25 games that hit the point-per-game mark, leading them in scoring with a 30-52–82 line while playing in all 82 games. Averaging over 17 minutes per game, it was the second time Duchene had hit 80 points in his 16-year NHL career and the fourth time he had hit 30 goals.

Duchene initially arrived in Texas on a one-year, $3MM contract for 2023-24 following a surprise buyout by the Predators with three years left on his contract. He posted 25 goals and 65 points in 80 games last year before taking a repeat of that deal to stay with the Stars last summer. It was a significant discount then, and he takes another significant discount now, locking in some highly-desired security through the rest of his mid-30s as well.

The Stars need any help they can get to ice a cap-compliant roster for 2025-26. Duchene’s steep discount certainly helps, but they still find themselves in a position to clear multiple salaries in order to even ice a full roster, let alone re-sign any other pending UFAs. Dallas now has just $455K in cap space with a roster of only 17 players, per PuckPedia. They need to open at least $1.9MM cap space at an absolute minimum via trades to be able to sign three league-minimum players for a bare-bones 20-man roster. In reality, they’ll move at least two of Mason Marchment ($4.5MM), Mathew Dumba ($3.75MM), and Ilya Lyubushkin ($3.25MM) to open up far more than that to give them some in-season flexibility while not taking a catastrophic hit to their forward depth. Jamie Benn, Evgenii Dadonov, and Mikael Granlund remain as pending…