Over the course of the draft weekend, the Dallas Stars made a series of moves and changes.
First, we announced that forwards Bryan Smolinski and Patrik Stefan and defenceman Darryl Sydor would not return to the team in the coming season. Also departing our organization were defencemen Jaroslav Modry and Jon Klemm, who announced their retirement at the conclusion of the season. While players departed our team, many players also committed themselves to returning. Forwards Mike Ribeiro, Jussi Jokinen, Jere Lehtinen, Stu Barnes, and Antti Miettinen all signed new contracts, while defenders Stephane Robidas and Doug Janik also renewed their deals.
On the trade front, Dallas made a series of moves, mostly involving draft picks. Notably, we traded Mike Smith to Phoenix for two second round selections in the 2007 draft and also acquired veteran forward Jamal Mayers from St. Louis in exchange for forward Eric Nystrom. While Nystrom was originally brought in to play the 4th line this season, we found that it would have been tough to play him on his strong LW side so we opted to trade him for a natural RW. We had intentions to target a RW for the bottom six so we are pleased to have gotten one in a deal.
At the draft itself, we made a total of four selections. We selected forwards Ruslan Bashkirov (8.0C), Angelo Espostio (8.0D) and Stefan Legein (7.5D), and goaltender Anders Lindback (8.0B). We are happy that we were able to improve our forward depth and add a solid goaltending prospect to our system.
On the front office side of things, assistant general manager Jaku took up the GM opening on the New York Rangers. We are thankful for his time and input and would like to wish him the best of luck in his new role.
Going into the off-season, the Dallas Stars will look to make additions on all front. We will need to add a back-up goaltender and a defenceman, and would like to add a centre into the mix if we have the cap space to facilitate that.