On the Dallas Stars …
Mark Stepneski: Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill on their trade deadline. Nill when asked once prices were set, was he close on anything.
“There’s always lots of talk. When you first start talking you don’t know what the prices are, but we started to see that the prices were very high and unless we got some major injury that was going to force us to make a trade, there wasn’t anything major that we were going to be doing.”
Nill when asked if they were getting calls.
“There were lots of calls. This was going on for almost two weeks. We did have a lot of interest in some of our players, some of the players down in Austin — some of our prospects.”
On the Arizona Coyotes …
Craig Morgan on Arizona Sports: Coyotes GM John Chayka only made an AHL related trade yesterday. He didn’t have a lot of options to work with. He was able to lay some framework for possible future talks.
“Any move done today is done with the opportunity cost of making a move in the future,” he said. “We decided that we were better to hold our powder, keep it dry and allow us to try to line up some larger moves like we made last year with adding Stepan, Hjalmarsson, Raanta and Demers. We’re looking to be aggressive to continue to improve our group.”
The Coyotes aren’t where they want/need to be. They are still young but need better players.
“We need some impact players here and if you’re looking to get an impact player via trade, it’s a lot easier in the summer. The supply is higher just because there are 30 teams willing to move players as opposed to just the handful that are moving players now.”
Teams were calling the Coyotes on defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson and goaltender Antti Raanta.
Chayka will likely wait until after the season to speak with most of their pending free agents – Max Domi and Laurent Dauphin are RFAs, Kevin Connauton and Luke Schenn are UFAs.
The plan is to continue talks with UFA Raanta and Chayka is open to talking with Brad Richardson.
