For Tyler Seguin, the upcoming season carries a weight unlike any he has faced before.
The 34-year-old enters the final year of the eight-year, $9.85 million annual cap hit contract he signed back in September of 2018, meaning every shift, every point and every game played this coming season will serve as an audition for what comes next.
At an age where most players are winding down, Seguin finds himself needing to wind back up and prove that the player who once put up 80 points in a single season still has something meaningful left to give. Injuries have been a persistent and damaging presence throughout the life of his current deal.
Seguin went down once again this past season with a torn ACL after a promising start that saw him record 17 points in 27 games, a pace that offered a genuine glimpse of what he remains capable of when healthy. The problem is staying healthy has become the defining challenge of his career's latter stages.
Since the start of the 2019-20 season, Seguin has appeared in just 344 of a possible 548 games, missing 204 contests to various ailments and robbing both himself and the Stars of the production they needed from one of the highest-paid players on the roster.
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The Stars are heading toward a significant cap crunch, with new deals for Jason Robertson and Mavrik Bourque looming as major financial commitments that will squeeze the roster from top to bottom. In that environment, every dollar attached to a big-ticket contract needs to be justified on the ice, and at $9.85 million per year, Seguin sits at the very top of that list.
The good news for Dallas is that motivation may never have been higher for the Brampton, Ontario native. Playing for a contract at 34 years old after a string of injury-shortened seasons has a way of sharpening focus, and if Seguin can stay on the ice for a full season, there is reason to believe the production can follow. His 17-point pace through 27 games this past season before his ACL gave out suggested the offensive instincts remain very much intact.
Whether his body will allow him to put together the kind of campaign the Stars desperately need from him remains the central question heading into next season. If it does, Seguin's contract year could be one of the more compelling individual stories in the NHL.
If it does not, Dallas may find itself absorbing the final year of a deal that never quite delivered on the promise attached to it when a former second overall pick put pen to paper nearly a decade ago.
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