I would love this deal, but Dal is not trading Honka, especially for that package when they could get Karlsson with him.

This deal would be so much better for Dallas than trading for Karlsson. Is Karlsson better than Johnson and Girardi? Absolutely. But the Stars had the 6th best defense in the NHL last season. With Heiskanen in the mix, the Stars defense will be as good, if not better, than last years defense. The Stars don't NEED to add defense. They NEED to add a true 2C. Spezza is a wild card. Who knows if he'll bounce back this season.

The trade essentially boils down to Girardi for Spezza and Honka for Johnson.

With Girardi, Dallas gets a bottom pairing RHD to replace Honka, and he's $4.5M cheaper than Spezza.

Honka still has potential, and it would suck to lose him, but Johnson is on a team friendly deal worth $5M per year over the next 6 years! That's an insanely good price for a 2C.

Dallas would be stupid to not do this trade. It's cheaper long term, and gives us the 2C we need to make a deep playoff run this season.

I think it would take Miro, just as I think it would take Serg from us, which I would do if a reasonable extension for EK was in place.

Yeah this was my thinking as well, and both have salaries drop off after the season. So for TBL, it ends up saving Girardi’s $3M plus Johnson’s $5M, which will help with the Kucherov and Point raises next year. Now to just move Killorn somehow. Haha.