An in-the-wild response to Dallas trading Ty Dellandrea to San Jose

For a fourth round pick in 2025.

It’s the end of a non-era.

The news broke earlier today per Elliotte Friedman that the former 13th overall pick from 2018, Ty Dellandrea, would be going to San Jose for a 2025 fourth-round pick.

Dellandrea scored 42 points through 151 games with the Stars, with his most notable year being last season when he scored nine goals, and tallied 19 assists for 28 points largely playing next to Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston. It felt like the beginning…until it wasn’t.

Real reactions

I wasn’t a huge fan.

I’ve made this admittedly cheap point before: that if Dellandrea didn’t play any games, or at least enough to be ineligible for rookie status (played 26 in the 2020-2021 season) before his ‘breakout’ year in 2022, then people would look at him differently. Perhaps even the organization might look at him differently. But this is purely theoretical.

When it got down to the marrow, he lost his spot next to Benn and Johnston in favor of Evgenii Dadonov at the trade deadline last year, and then simply become chicken finger fodder this year, mostly drawing in when Radek Faksa or Craig Smith would underperform.

In terms of shift-to-shift impact, he pretty much profiled exactly what he was drafted for: a one-way forward mistaken for a two-way forward with good defensive impact but no offensive impact.

Not sure what this chart means and need a quick and dirty explainer? Click here to learn more about Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus (RAPM).

Theoretically, I should dislike Dellandrea as a player, but truth is that I don’t see how he’s any different than Nils Lundkvist: what opportunity was there for him to improve? He went from being part of a quality third line to being an afterthought on the fourth line spent mostly with Smith, Faksa, and Sam Steel; essentially within the blink of an eye.

I want to stress here what I’m NOT saying: I’m not saying Dellandrea needed to be reunited with Johnston and Benn; or that Dellandrea needed to be gassed into a top six role; or that Dallas is letting go of some William Karlsson-type player. I’m simply saying that in answer to the question in big neon bright letters “What did we learn?” I would argue: nothing. There wasn’t enough evidence to say one way or the other if Dellandrea could be anything more than depth.

To be fair, the evidence that he couldn’t even be impactful depth is, maybe a good one. I don’t know what being in a movie is like, but I imagine if I get a line or two as some bit player, the lines should be easier to remember since my role is so small, right? Dellandrea taking penalties in his limited minutes was a real problem. And that criticism is warranted.

But how true is it that he didn’t have a positive impact in proportion to his role?

Not sure what this chart means and need a quick and dirty explainer? Click here to learn more about Synthetic Goals (sG).

I’m not sure, but I think the foundation was there for a quality role player.

Mind you, I despised the pick at the time. Picking role players anywhere in the first round is generally bad philosophy and that’s who Dellandrea was even in his draft year. But I’ll be fair to Dallas. Go back to that draft. It was awful. Half of the players in the top 10 either went bust or have become depth in Kotkaniemi, Hayton (I know he has a big role in Arizona but still), Zadina, Boqvist, Kravstov. Except for Noah Dobson and K’Andre Miller, no one outside of the top 10 in that first round has amounted to much; although Joel Farabee and Rasmus Sandin will have fine careers.

So Dellandrea is practically a success story by comparison. Still, much as I didn’t like the pick, I think he showed enough for me to think he has more — even if “more” amounts to only slightly more. If nothing else, he’s better than at least one player that will likely make the opening night roster.

Upon further reflection

Yep: still don’t like it. But I’m also not torn up about it. I accept it as part of business. Nill had an offer on the table where he could free himself wholly of $1 million in cap for the season, and for a player who couldn’t crack the lineup. I’m doing my best not to talk about Faksa because I know that’s a contract you can’t simply unload the way you can for Dellandrea. But I suspect the same thing that informed Nill’s decision to part with Dellandrea (giving him a change of scenery) is the same thing that will inform his decision not to aggressively offload Faksa’s contract: Nill’s a nice guy and likes to do right by the player.

But there’s still time Jim!

The San Jose perspective

I like this move by Mike Grier.

He already has nine picks in this year’s draft. The roster he’s building with players like William Eklund, Will Smith, and soon to be Macklin Celebrini — as good a two-way pivot as there’s been in at least a decade, IMO — will be defined by their genuine ability to play strong in all three zones. It’s a roster set up to look a lot like Florida’s in the distant future. A player like Dellandrea, though rough around the edges, projects to be exactly that for them. He’s probably more Ryan Lomberg than Eetu Luostarinen (boy has he been a four-alarm fire on the penalty kill in the Cup Finals; love that dude), but paying a fourth rounder for something potentially in-between is a nice bit of business.