The Stars have signed defenseman Esa Lindell to a five-year contract extension worth $26.25MM, the team announced Tuesday. It will kick in next season and keep him in Texas through the 2029-30 season.
That works out to a $5.25MM cap hit, a slight decrease in average annual pay from the six-year, $34.8MM extension with a $5.8MM cap hit he signed in 2019 to keep him off the RFA market. He’s entering the final season of that deal. His extension carries a no-trade clause from 2025-26 through 2027-28 and a 20-team no-trade list in the 2028-29 and 2029-30 campaigns. The full breakdown is as follows, per PuckPedia:
2025-26: $4MM base salary, $2.5MM signing bonus
2026-27: $4MM base salary, $2.5MM signing bonus
2027-28: $4.25MM base salary, $1MM signing bonus
2028-29: $4MM base salary
2029-30: $4MM base salary
With restricted free agent Thomas Harley still unsigned with one day to go until training camp, it’s not the contract news Stars fans were expecting regarding a top-four defender. But it is a critical piece of business to keep Lindell, one of the league’s premier stay-at-home defensemen for the better part of the last decade, in Dallas past this season.
Despite being 6’3″ and 220 lbs, Lindell isn’t a bruiser by any stretch. In fact, he’s viewed as one of the more gentlemanly players in the league, finishing in the top 25 in Lady Byng Trophy voting in each of the past three years.
His shutdown game is one of awareness and strong skating ability to maintain positioning while defending the rush or back-checking. He was deployed heavily in defensive situations last year at even strength, logging 62.5% of his in-zone starts in his own end, and still managed to control 53.7% of expected goals.
The 30-year-old Finn consistently has below-average shot-attempt shares, but he serves as a prime example of why CF% is rarely an end-all-be-all to determine how well a player controls possession. He may bleed low-danger chances but rarely lets high-danger chances reach the Dallas net.
Lindell isn’t a non-factor offensively, either. He’s logged more than 20 points in each of the past three years, posting five goals and 21 assists for 26 points in 82 games last season. He’s extremely durable, too, having not missed a regular-season game since the 2021-22 campaign.
His ice time has been bumped down to more conservative levels ever since Peter DeBoer took over behind the bench for Rick Bowness in the 2022 offseason, though. After a half-decade of consistently seeing north of 22 minutes per game, Lindell’s averaged 20:12 over the past two seasons.
Lindell will be again tasked with anchoring Dallas’ second pairing this season, although there will be a bit of a competition for who ends up as his right-shot partner. UFA signings Mathew Dumba and Ilya Lyubushkin are expected to contend for the role, replacing 2024 trade-deadline rental Chris Tanev.
The Stars now have $37.5MM in projected cap space for the 2025-26 season, per PuckPedia, assuming an upper limit of $92MM. That figure only accounts for 10 players, though, with most of their forward group (and star goaltender Jake Oettinger) slated for RFA or UFA status next summer.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
ESPN’s Kevin Weekes was first to report the signing.
Great signing.
Still a quality player and only 30. Odd he took less.
No state income tax in Texas adds ~10% to the deal. That helps.