Dallas has a name for the opening beside Jamie Benn and Sam Steel: Arttu Hyry. Glen Gulutzan outlined that plan after Thursday’s practice, giving the Stars’ latest roster adjustment an immediate on-ice purpose.
On Thursday, the club placed Matt Duchene on long-term injured reserve and summoned Colin Blackwell and Arttu Hyry to the NHL roster, turning an injury-related absence into a manageable piece of roster business.
That matters at the Stars’ Frisco base because the organization now has more than a vacancy to discuss. It has two additional forward options before Friday’s home game against St. Louis and Saturday’s trip to Nashville. Hyry is planned for the third line, while the recalls leave Dallas flexibility over the rest of the workload.
Neither move promises a permanent job. They do give coach Glen Gulutzan room to distribute responsibility across a demanding opening weekend rather than asking the same group to carry every contingency.
The timing makes the adjustment more consequential. Tyler Seguin is scheduled to return for his first regular-season appearance since an ACL injury cut short his 2025-26 season in early December. His return was already going to require careful lineup management.
Duchene’s placement changes the available pieces around that return, while Seguin’s presence adds experience without removing the ordinary uncertainty attached to a player coming back from a major knee injury.
This is the practical value of Thursday’s transactions: flexibility arrives before the schedule begins squeezing it. Blackwell and Hyry can be used if Dallas needs a different mix, an extra option for a particular matchup or fresher legs across two nights. That does not make either recall a solution to every depth question.
It simply means the coaching staff has choices, which is a better starting point than discovering during the weekend that every plan depended on perfect availability.
The business decision also connects directly to what Dallas wants to change on the ice. Gulutzan and his staff have emphasized quicker exits from the defensive zone, more sustained time in the offensive end and greater creativity without inviting unnecessary risk. Those are objectives, not results delivered by a transaction.
Still, adding usable bodies gives the club a better chance to pursue them when the preferred combination of players is unavailable.
A quick exit begins before the pass. Forwards have to present themselves as dependable outlets, arrive with enough support to keep possession and make the next play before pressure closes around the puck. The same principle applies after an attacking-zone entry. If Dallas wants more territory, it needs support behind the first attempt so that one broken play does not immediately become a long retreat.
That is where the personnel test becomes real. A depleted or overworked forward group can make an ambitious style look like a collection of isolated instructions.
If Blackwell or Hyry helps keep a line functional through the weekend, the value may appear in a less dramatic form than a goal: a clean retrieval, a safe outlet and another shift beginning in the attacking half of the rink. Those small sequences are the currency of a faster game.
Dallas has plenty of reason to care about reducing those margins. The Stars finished last season 50-20-12, third-best in the NHL, yet took part in 46 one-goal games, second-most in the league. Through their first 31 games, they were 21-5-5 overall and a 14-2-5 mark when outcomes were separated by a goal.
