The Dallas Stars placed Matt Duchene on injured reserve Wednesday with a lower-body injury, two days before Friday's opener against St. Louis.
Sam Nestler of DLLS Sports reported the move. No return timeline was attached to it.
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Bad timing doesn't begin to cover it. The Stars rolled through four straight wins before the regular season, capped by a 2-1 win in Minnesota last Friday.
And the schedule gives Glen Gulutzan no soft landing. After the Blues on Friday, Dallas heads to Nashville on Saturday for the back half of a back-to-back.
Last season was already a step back for the veteran center. He finished 2025-26 with 45 points and went minus-3.
Compare that to 2024-25, when he scored 30 goals and dressed for every game on the schedule. Two seasons, two very different players.
Jim Nill's contract bet on Duchene just got riskier
Here's the uncomfortable part. Duchene carries a $4,500,000 cap hit through 2028-29, when he becomes a UFA.
Nill kept a mid-30s center on the books for three more seasons after this one. That was a shaky bet before Wednesday, and a lower-body injury in September does it no favors.
Mileage matters. Duchene has 1,195 regular-season NHL games on the odometer, and nobody buys a car with those numbers expecting zero trips to the shop.
Dallas does have heavy money invested elsewhere up front. Mikko Rantanen and Jason Robertson each count $12,000,000 against the cap.
Those two can't do everything. Somebody has to absorb the minutes Duchene leaves behind, and Gulutzan has to find that player before puck drop Friday.
The spring value is real, too. He posted 9 points in 6 playoff games last season, his best postseason rate since landing in Dallas.
Career-wise, he sits at 936 points. That's a lot of hockey sense missing from the lineup on opening night.
So who slides up? The answer shows up on Friday's lineup card, and it'll say plenty about how deep Gulutzan believes this roster really is.
The report said lower body. Nothing more. For a 35-year-old center with term left, the next update matters a lot more than this one.
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Was keeping Matt Duchene signed through 2028-29 a mistake by Jim Nill?
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