Dallas Stars Extend Qualifying Offers To Seven Restricted Free Agents
By Josh Clark
The Dallas Stars spent their Monday afternoon sending out qualifying offers to their restricted free agents. They locked in all but one of their RFAs just before the deadline window closed.
On Friday night, the Dallas Stars made their first move in the restricted free agent market. They signed Stephen Johns to a three-year extension, thus knocking down their first of nine RFA negotiations.
But that’s as far as they got in negotiations between Friday and Monday. And considering Monday was the qualifying deadline for RFAs, the Stars had to work quickly.
On Monday afternoon, Dallas announced that they had extended qualifying offers to seven of their eight remaining restricted free agents. A qualifying offer gives the Stars control over the negotiating rights of the RFAs in question.
The rule is that if a qualified RFA isn’t signed to a new contract by Dec. 1, 2018, they are ineligible to play for the rest of the season. But that shouldn’t be a problem. Now that Dallas has them locked in for the time being, they can continue negotiating with each of the qualified players.
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Here is a list of the players qualified by the Dallas Stars:
Devin Shore, C
Gemel Smith, C
Mattias Janmark, LW
Remi Elie, LW
Philippe Desrosiers, G
On the other hand, the Stars did not qualify left winger Cole Ully. As a result, the 2013 fifth-round pick will become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.
The next move with each of the qualified players involves signing them to new contracts like they did with Johns.
Players like Janmark might be looking at a longer-term deal ranging from 2-3 years. But other players like Heatherington and Desrosiers might be looking at one-year deals in order to give them a chance to further prove themselves to the organization. Other players like Smith, Shore, Dickinson, and Elie could fall into either category, depending on what the organization wants to do with them.
One thing is for sure, though: this class of RFAs carries a lot of potential. Many of them have already taken on NHL opportunities and been building their way up in the organization. These contracts are the next step in helping them further their careers.
We’ll see how the Dallas Stars handle each of these seven RFAs over the next few weeks or months. Contracts could very well be done before training camp starts (players like Radek Faksa, Jamie Oleksiak, and Patrik Nemeth were signed before training camp last year).
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But for now, the Stars retained certain pieces of their future. That’s good news. Now they have UFAs to worry about.