When Jamie Benn returns to the ice after his recovery from a collapsed lung, he’ll enter rarified air among Dallas athletes. The Stars captain is embarking on his 17th season in Dallas, which is more than Mike Modano played in Texas. (He spent four of his 20 seasons with the franchise in Minnesota.) It’s more than Jason Witten and L.P. Ladouecer’s joint record of 16 years with the Cowboys, and four Michael Young’s benchmark with the Texas Rangers. Were it not for a certain D Magazine cover boy’s 21 seasons with the Mavs, Benn would be setting a new high-water mark for staying power in North Texas sports.
Which is why tonight will feel more than a little odd. For the first time since 2009, a Stars season begins without Benn in the lineup. And for the first time since 2013, there won’t be an opening night lineup introduction featuring PA man Jeff K shouting, “The CAPTAINNN,” typically heralding the largest cheers from the Stars faithful.
Jamie Benn is the Dallas Stars, and the Dallas Stars are Jamie Benn. But at some point, in the not-too-distant future, Benn will be gone. The captain turned 36 in July, and despite missing just two regular-season games since 2021 (both due to the birth of his son last year), his body can’t keep up his bruising style of play much longer. The Stars will soon need a new leader, and if there is a silver lining to Benn’s injury, it will be the opportunity it affords Dallas to get a glimpse at what—and who—could be next. Not only will Benn be out of action for the next four to eight weeks, but the nature of his injury means he won’t be able to travel with the team, either. New voices will be a necessity.
Any such discussion begins by understanding Benn’s leadership style and how revered he is in the Stars’ locker room. He’s the epitome of an alpha—a soft-spoken one, but the alpha who nonetheless sets the tone for the entire team. When Benn speaks, everyone listens. It’s an unspoken non-negotiable in Dallas.
The roots for this were planted well before Benn was ever given the “C.” Former Stars associate coach Willie Desjardins always pointed back to December 23, 2010, when Benn threw haymakers with Jarome Iginla, one of hockey’s most respected leaders. Brenden Morrow, who preceded Benn as captain, once told me he knew the room already belonged to Benn during the 2012-13 season, Morrow’s final campaign in Dallas.
While the Stars’ next captain doesn’t have to be a carbon copy of Benn, he’ll need to fit a similar mold. He must be efficient enough on the ice to earn respect while also willing to set the tone and do the little things to uphold a standard across the room. That’s how Dallas’ most successful captains, a list that also includes Morrow and Derian Hatcher, tend to connect: by sending a message through their play and their hard work.
Two players fit that job description especially well. New Stars head coach Glen Gulutzan has already said he’ll lean heavily on Mikko Rantanen this season. The Stars’ best player is a bona fide superstar who wore a letter with the Colorado Avalanche and handles the public-facing, day-to-day duties of a leader better than most. It’s not a surprise, then, that he might captain Team Finland at the Olympics in the wake of Aleksander Barkov’s season-ending injury. He might be the best choice on a Stars team with a heavy Finnish contingent, especially since he already meshes well with Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell, who are key members of Benn’s court.
Elsewhere, Wyatt Johnston has worn an “A” at times the past two seasons, one of the youngest in the league to do so. At 22, he already has a ton of the polish and maturity the Stars like in a captain. He might be the best stylistic match for Benn as someone who is soft-spoken off the ice but confident on it, as well as measured and calculated. It’s no surprise that he is already viewed by older teammates as one of the faces of the franchise.
While Rantanen and Johnston are the two best bets to have a “C” stitched on their jersey someday, Jake Oettinger may hold the most sway in determining how it shakes out. Oettinger very much keeps the Stars’ room together. He’s the social connector and the conduit for various cliques, which gives him a degree of gravitas Pete DeBoer poorly misread when he threw Oettinger under the bus after the Stars were eliminated by Edmonton last spring.
As a goalie, Oettinger isn’t allowed to be an official on-ice captain because of NHL rules. The Vancouver Canucks once named Roberto Luongo captain via a loophole in which Luongo didn’t formally wear the letter, leaving Luongo to paint a “C” on his mask. But the experiment came with shortcomings; goalies, by nature of the position, aren’t on the bench to actually lead the rest of the team on a shift-to-shift basis. So while Oettinger won’t be the captain in practice, he’ll have an enormous amount of influence in deciding who is. The player who emerges with the role must understand the Stars’ group dynamic, and that makes Oettinger his greatest ally and conduit to the rest of the team.
Someone will emerge, because someone has to. Still, there is a difference between being handed a role and seizing it. Not all captains are created equal. The most tenured one the Stars have ever known will begin his 17th season soon enough. But the true groundwork, or stitchwork, for the future of the “C” begins getting laid tonight.
Author
Sean Shapiro
Sean Shapiro
View Profile
Sean Shapiro covers the Stars for StrongSide. He is a national NHL reporter and writer who previously covered the Dallas Stars organization as a beat writer for various publications between 2012 and 2020.