Texas Unaffected by Deadline Directly, Will Not See Nichushkin in Playoffs

Lidster and Desjardins (Credit: Christina Shapiro/Texas Stars)
It was a mostly quiet deadline for the Texas Stars, who were quite affected last year. No Texas Stars players were traded in the two deals that Dallas had before the 2 PM Central deadline.

Of course, Texas was indirectly affected by the trades elsewhere in the league. Most notably were the trades out of Florida that sent Jacob Markstrom out of San Antonio, leaving Michael Houser and Rob Madore as the goalie pair for the Rampage. Additionally, tonight's opponent, the Abbotsford Heat, lost some depth in the organization with the trade of Reto Berra, forcing them to play Olivier Roy tonight. Ortio and MacDonald look to be Flames for the rest of the season.

One thing that didn't happen was the trade of Ray Whitney. Widely speculated to be on the move, he stayed put. Dallas has 12 forwards now and doesn't really have room for Colton Sceviour to be called up, as had been posited in this space. Sceviour is more valuable to the organization playing in Cedar Park than eating popcorn in NHL press boxes right now.

Finally, Dallas decided against 'papering' any NHL players down to the AHL today to make them eligible for the Calder Cup playoffs. Any players who are going to participate in the playoffs must have been on an AHL roster by 2 PM Central today. Valeri Nichushkin was the most likely target of this type of transaction.

Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill covered it in the afternoon conference call:
"All the guys that have been here with the team have been here all year and deserve to be here. The other thing is that we have a lot of good young players down in Austin. THey need to play lots. I want them to get ice time. We have younger junior kids and college kids coming in that are going to need ice time also. I'm excited that we've got lots of depth up top and lots down in Austin. We're going to need that depth if we're going to win going forward."
Of course, the next thing to watch for the AHL trade/movement deadline coming in 7 days: 2 PM Central on March 12th.

Comments

  1. While I'm disappointed we won't be seeing Val Nichushkin during playoffs, it's nice to have all of our players. I'm sure consistency will really help in the (hopefully) long playoff run.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Frankly my thoughts are the least amount of traveling between Dallas and Cedar Park the better for for Texas. Dallas is a poorly ran franchise with a roster of border line NHLers that have little to no postseason experience and always and always hit Cedar Park with an attitude. Look at last years flop IMO it was the direct result of guy being sent up and down. Guys like Vincor, Segal, and this year Jeffery weren't/aren't worth the risk or effort.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting. Remember to keep it civil. Using a name will help us identify replies and build a Texas Stars community.