The Chicago Blackhawks made good on Seth Jones’s desire over the weekend to move on from the rebuilding team, and his request (demand?) to move to a contender was fulfilled as well as he landed with the Florida Panthers. But Jones reportedly had one other team on his request list as well—and one other only: the Dallas Stars.
The Stars, however, were not interested in working out a trade for the veteran defenseman.
Per @PatBoyle__, Seth Jones and his agent only gave the #Blackhawks two teams he’d accept a trade to. One was the Dallas Stars and the other was the Florida Panthers. The Stars weren’t interested.
— Wally Mazurek (@WallMaz35) March 2, 2025
According to Pat Boyle, Jones was interested in heading to his hometown to play, but the Stars, despite their oodles of cap room and a desire to fill a need on the blueline, said ‘No, thanks.’ Fellow insider Elliotte Friedman, on his 32 Thoughts podcast, simply said that “it wasn’t something they were capable of doing.”
The Stars will be without their workhorse on D, Miro Heiskanen, for an indefinite period, and are certainly in the market for a veteran stabilizing force on the back end. They also have nearly $6 million in cap space, and could open up plenty more if they place Heiskanen on LTIR along with Tyler Seguin.
But still, Jones was apparently not what they were looking for.
The Blackhawks retained $2.5M of Jones’s massive $9.5M cap hit as part of the deal with the Panthers, leaving a $7M cap hit for five more seasons.
