Dallas Stars Are Winning the Connor Carrick Trade So Far

It’s been two weeks since the Dallas Stars traded for Connor Carrick and it has already turned out well for the team.

In his time with the Dallas Stars, Carrick has already had an impressive impact on the season after bouncing around a bit to start his career.

Carrick, who was a fifth-round pick in 2012, started his career in Washington, playing just 37 games for the team over two seasons before being traded.

He headed to Toronto at the deadline in 2016 in a package with Brooks Laich and a 2nd for Daniel Winnik and a 5th.

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While with the Leafs, Carrick showed promise, but he had things to work on and couldn’t consistently make the line-up. This fall, the team decided to put him on waivers, knowing there was a good chance someone claimed him, just like the Stars did with Remi Elie.

Instead of risking someone else claiming him first, Jim Nill made a trade that was initially met with a healthy dose of skepticism from fans.

Why should the team trade for yet another defenseman when they’ve been struggling with too many for the past few seasons?

It’s a fair question, considering they already had Dillon Heatherington waiting in the wings and Gavin Bayreuther getting a lot of preseason buzz, both of whom ended up in the AHL for now. The Stars will need to sort out the defense depth situation once Stephen Johns comes back, but they’ve got some time.

Johns is out indefinitely without any sort of announced timetable, so the team may be able to put that off for a while, but until then, Carrick is making a great case for the Stars to keep him in the line-up.

Already this season, Carrick has had a goal and 3 assists in 4 games while getting about 16 minutes of ice time a night. He’s the only defenseman other than John Klingberg to score a goal so far, and one of only seven players on the entire team to do so.

That goal also came at a spectacular time as the second of the Stars’ three goals in less than three minutes, which tied them up with Anaheim on Saturday.

Over his career, Carrick is a 0.2 points per game player, but he’s been at an even 1.0 in Dallas so far. In all likelihood, that’s not sustainable for him, but it’s a solid start.

Carrick has proven his worth on the team so far, but it’s made even better by his reasonable contract and how little the Stars gave up for him.

He’s got a $1.3 M cap hit, and that contract expires next summer, at which point he’ll be an RFA.  That’s the same thing the Stars have Roman Polak signed for, though Polak is a UFA at the end of it, and Carrick has played better than his former Leafs teammate. It’s higher than some of the other deals they’ve got young defensemen on, but it still works perfectly fine under the Stars’ cap space without causing long-term problems.

The Stars also only gave up a seventh-round pick for him, which becomes a sixth-round pick if he plays more than 50 games. A sixth for a guy on a low contract playing more than 50 games is a decent trade.

Of course, if he plays 50 games for the Stars, that likely means one of three things. Either Stephen Johns doesn’t get better for a long time, another defenseman is injured, or Julius Honka isn’t having the type of season that warrants his freedom from the press box. None of those are ideal for the Stars, but if that’s the case, it’s good to see that Carrick can more than likely handle the expectations.

If none of those happen and Carrick is playing too well to sit him, the Stars could always make another trade and ship out a defenseman. However, for now, fans can just wait and see how things play out while enjoying the solid play Carrick has shown so far this season.