Robertson and Harley Are Here. Now the Injured Four Have to Show Up Too.

Dallas opened the 2026–27 season with Robertson and Thomas Harley in camp after the front office quietly had trade packages in place for both of them this summer. They chose to run it back instead. That decision, combined with the July trades of Mavrik Bourque and Ilya Lyubushkin to Nashville for picks, leaves the Stars with a thinner roster built around a very specific bet: that Rantanen, Robertson, and Wyatt Johnston can carry the offense while the injured players work their way back.

The four names that matter most right now are Roope Hintz, Tyler Seguin, Nils Lundkvist, and Arttu Hyry. I wrote about all four of them in July when camp opened with no timetable on any of them. Since then, Hintz and Hyry have moved to day-to-day, which is progress, but Seguin and Lundkvist were still out as the regular season began. Hintz is the one Dallas can least afford to lose for any extended stretch — he posted 36 points in 44 games last season and is the only true center capable of anchoring a second line behind Johnston.

The early returns are fine. Dallas is on a six-game win streak, and the 2–1 opener against St. Louis was exactly the kind of tight, goaltending-dependent game you'd expect from a team still sorting out its depth. Scoring has dipped to 3.0 goals per game over the last ten, down from 3.8 before that. That's not alarming yet, but it's the number to watch. When the top line cools even slightly, there isn't much behind it right now to pick up the slack.

The next couple of weeks will tell the story. If Hintz gets back on the ice and stays there, the gamble starts to look reasonable. If the injury list keeps growing — three more forwards were already added to the out list around opening night — the front office's decision to shed depth rather than add it is going to come under real scrutiny.