Jason Robertson changed agents, does it matter? And how do these relationships work?

Let's take a look at some agency news that happened this week.

Back in September, before the NHL season started, I put together my second annual Dallas Stars organization power rankings for D Magazine.

This week two of the top-five on that list combined forces when Stars forward Jason Robertson (No. 3 on the list) switched agents to Octagon’s Andy Scott (No. 4 on the list), who also happens to be the agent for Mikko Rantanen, Wyatt Johnston, and Thomas Harley.

Robertson’s brother, Nick, also switched from CAA to Octagon, so it should be noted this wasn’t just a single move.

Right now we don’t know the full impetus or reasoning for the move, and I don’t think it’s really fair to dig deeper any of that speculation of why or why not Robertson actually changed agents. I know he changed, he’s deferred any comment to his new agent, and his new representative isn’t the best source to ask about what went wrong with the old one.

That being said, it is fascinating timing for the move.

Robertson, as it’s well-known, has been in the headlines for various reasons in the past couple months. He’s a pending restricted free agent, was subject to over-zealous trade rumors before that, and despite leading all American’s in goal scoring in the 2025 calendar year, was left off Team USA for the upcoming Olympic Games.

Stars GM Jim Nill has also told me, directly, that he’s working on getting Robertson signed, that he hopes this season Robertson pushes his value and that he wasn’t in to much of a rush before the season started.

Now, with a new representation, that negation doesn’t completely start over, but it does go back to Level 1.

And the interesting thing for Scott and the Stars pertaining to Robertson, is that Level 1, is probably a bit more advance that most Level 1 conversations.

Scott and Nill have hammered out deals in the past 18 months for extensions with Johnston, Rantanen, and Harley. The Johnston and Rantanen deals, for example, actually were negotiated on some of the same phone calls around the time the Stars were given permission to talk extension from the Carolina Hurricanes before the trade was finalized to Dallas.

Those deals turned out pretty favorably for both sides, even if it feels like the Stars “won” the Rantanen deal a bit while the agency side “won” a bit more on the Johnston deal. The Harley deal, a bridge pact, will still be judged over time here.

It’s also not the first time the Stars have had this type of thing happened. Ian Pulver, from the Will Sports group, is the agent that worked out the deal for Tyler Seguin’s extension in 2019. Pulver also happens to represent Miro Heiskanen, and some of that good will didn’t hurt in 2021 when the Stars signed their franchise defenseman slightly below his market rate.

It’s a give-and-take business with agents and general managers, it might get contentious at times, but anyone who tries to “win” a deal to one-sided, often doesn’t last very long.

Nils Lundkvist’s agent is Claude Lemieux, in 2023 the Stars did Lemieux a favor by trading Fredrik Olofsson to the Colorado Avalanche for future considerations to help the player avoid a European contract he had signed. It was a deal the Stars didn’t have to do, but it helped the player out, and as Lundkvist went through some of his trials and tribulations in Dallas under Pete DeBoer, Nill’s past treatment of his agent didn’t hurt smoothing all of that over with the Lundkvist camp.

None of this is to say the Stars had a negative relationship in the past with CAA or Pat Brisson, Robertson’s former agent. Matt Duchene and Nathan Bastian are Brisson clients, for example, but it is important to note that in the current string of events, the Stars and Octagon have been heavily tied together on deals.

For Robertson, whether it’s the reason he changed agents or not, it’s probably a positive sign in the discussion, and based off the Stars recent struggles he might even have more leverage in this moment because of his importance to the team.

Relationships matter in this business, just like any other transactional-based one, one deal might not always positively impact another, but a negative can certainly leave a sour taste.