What We Learned: How can Dallas Stars make remaining RFA deals work?

The Dallas Stars currently have about $10.33-million available in cap space, on paper.

That's a good position in which to find yourself during a summer in which close to half the league is at or over the salary cap.

But the problem for general manager Jim Nill is that his two most important players for next season — a top-flight winger whose game only seems to grow with each passing season, and a No. 1 goaltender who can keep the team in contention for years to come — remain unsigned.

Combined, Jason Robertson and Jake Oettinger should cost the Stars a lot more than $10ish-million against the cap, and that's probably true even if they were both signed to properly valued two-year bridge deals that artificially depress their cost. But the problem is that even this strategy might not work too well for Dallas.

They have just 11 players signed for next year at a little more than $50-million, and the cap is probably only going to go up by a small amount. Some of those signed players, such as Miro Heiskanen, are extremely good and will be crucial to the team's success for a long time.