Dallas Stars: Roussel heads to Vancouver, Pateryn to Minnesota

While the Dallas Stars are working on giving contracts to a few free agents today, two former players are confirmed to be on their way out.

The Dallas Stars will let Antoine Roussel and Greg Pateryn leave for bigger contracts elsewhere, with Roussel heading to Vancouver and Pateryn heading to Minnesota.

Roussel has been with the Stars for his entire NHL career after going undrafted. He’s a fan favorite player and he’s certainly been the most feisty player on the team for the last few seasons. He’s also been on a small contract, but now he’s looking for a raise that his numbers don’t warrant.

In the past, he’s been good for 25 or 30 points a season while playing third line minutes. However, he had a down year, only putting up 17 points and taking some costly penalties. His penalty minutes have led the team every season he’s been with the Dallas Stars, with many of them coming from fights.

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Unnecessary penalties are bad on any team, but especially on a team that’s struggled with the penalty kill like the Stars have in recent seasons. They improved to 14th in the league last year, but that wasn’t hard, considering they were dead last in 2016-17 by a good margin when the penalty kill was at 73.9%.

Vancouver offered Roussel 4 years at $3.2 million AAV. Roussel did good work for the Stars, but at the end of the day, the Stars can’t and shouldn’t spent that much money on a guy like Roussel.

Pateryn is signing a three-year, $2.25 million AAV contract with the Wild. He was acquired in the Jordie Benn trade during the 2016-17 season and came in as a guy who’d never played a full season in the NHL.

Despite only having 82 games over four seasons in Montreal, he came in and became a regular in the line-up in Dallas. He averaged close to 20 minutes a game of ice time last season, including play on the penalty kill. He wasn’t a flashy offensive defenseman, but he played solid defensive minutes and had 155 hits and 148 blocks.

Pateryn didn’t spent a long time in Dallas, but he had a positive impact on the team during his time here. The team appears to be replacing him with a one-year deal for Roman Polak, but they’d probably be better off going with the known quantity in Pateryn.

Next: Rumors: Stars Signing Anton Khudobin, Roman Polak

More players are likely to depart the Dallas Stars officially over the next few days, including Kari Lehtonen and Dan Hamhuis. For now, fans will say goodbye to these two and thank them for their time here.