That works out to a $5.25M cap hit, a slight decrease in average annual pay from the six-year, $34.8M extension with a $5.8M 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:
2025-26: $4M base salary, $2.5M signing bonus
2026-27: $4M base salary, $2.5M signing bonus
2027-28: $4.25M base salary, $1M signing bonus
2028-29: $4M base salary
2029-30: $4M 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 beyond this season.
Despite being 6’3″ and 220 pounds, 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 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 $37.5M in projected cap space for the 2025-26 season, per PuckPedia, assuming an upper limit of $92M. 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.
