The Dallas Stars have been fortunate to employ many solid veterans in recent years. But in this major feature story from THN’s December 10, 2018 edition (Volume 72, Issue 6), writer Matt Larkin wrote a piece on Stars forward Tyler Seguin’s ascent to the pinnacle of NHL competition.
In September of 2018, Seguin signed an eight-year, $78.8-million contract extension with the Stars, who’d acquired him from Boston five seasons earlier. Seguin would’ve gotten at least that much in another market, but his heart was always in Texas. “If there was any pause thinking about the open market, it wasn’t very long in my head,” Seguin said in the story. “My goal, my objective, really my dream all along was to stay in Dallas. Within the first few months of being traded here from Boston, I knew I wanted to be a Star for as long as I could be. I had to think about maybe playing out this year and being an unrestricted free agent. In a way, I was ready to do that, but it was something I never wanted to do, and I’m glad I never had to, because I wanted to be a Dallas Star through and through.”
Seguin hasn’t won a Stanley Cup with the Stars, but he has delivered very well on his contract, which expires in 2027. But as his career unfolded, Seguin earned the trust of coaches such as veteran bench boss Ken Hitchcock. “My coaches in the past, when I made a mistake or had a bad game, they’d put me to the wing the next game, but Hitch didn’t let me off the hook,” Seguin told Larkin. “I’d have a bad game, and he’d say, ‘You’re going right back out there. You played like crap against Jonathan Toews last night, but you’ve got Sidney Crosby tomorrow night.’ He put me in that spot where I had to grab the opportunity, but he gave me the opportunity. I think I earned the respect of playing the position.”
The clapping starts the second Tyler Seguin boards the plane. He stares down the aisle to see all his teammates grinning. It’s a surreal moment that he says he’ll never forget. The Stars, on their way to training camp in Boise, Idaho, are cheering Seguin because he’s just signed an eight-year, $78.8-million extension, announced this mid-September morning as part of the team’s start-of-camp media day in Dallas. They know they have their top center for close to the next decade, and they’re ecstatic. It’s a 180-degree turn from what appeared to be a dicey situation between Seguin and the Stars just a few weeks earlier. Seguin was entering the final season of his contract, and while he still had a year to ink an extension, John Tavares’ decision to leave the New York Islanders and sign with the Toronto Maple Leafs on July 1 legitimized the idea that not every star player must be loyal to his current team. Pundits loaded Seguin into the chamber and fired off stories asking if he would be “The next Tavares” in July 2019. At the BioSteel camp in Toronto, asked about his contract in a media scrum, Seguin said he was “disappointed” at how the negotiations were going. That seemingly nudged the doomsday clock closer to midnight.
But all was not as it seemed. Stars GM Jim Nill said Seguin was simply caught off-guard by the question and blurted out the wrong answer, as he reassured Nill when they spoke afterward. “I said, ‘Don’t worry, Tyler, that’s part of life,’” Nill said. “It wasn’t an issue with me. But it gets hyped up because of the media.”
