Carrick laments ‘quick death’
Former Leafs blue-liner finding home with Stars often paired with Polak
Connor Carrick has fit in nicely with the Dallas Stars, with three assists in two games since the Maple Leafs traded him on the eve of the NHL season.
Still, seeing his former mates come to town so soon — the Leafs play in Dallas on Tuesday night — might serve as a harsh reminder of how hard it was to leave a Toronto team on the rise.
“I had a lot of goals and dreams with Toronto and they had to die a quick death,” Carrick said in a phone interview on Monday. “I knew coming in this year what the coaching staff thought of me. I know there was a management change. Sometimes you need a change in scenery to get out of the mould you’re in. That might have been the case.”
Carrick’s fate was sealed when new Leafs GM Kyle Dubas and coach Mike Babcock opted to keep Justin Holl and Martin Marincin as extra defencemen.
“I had an idea that something was going down,” said Carrick, who at 24 is two years younger than Holl and Marincin. “The writing was on the wall. It started to look like it wasn’t going to go in my favour during camp. I was excited to get an opportunity with an NHL team with the talent to win, and a team that treats its players real well.”
After the Leafs put him on waivers, the same day as goalies Curtis McElhinney and Calvin Pickard, a last-minute trade emerged with Dallas for a seventh-round pick in 2019 that could become a sixth-rounder.
“Where we were picking on the waiver wire, I talked to other teams and I don’t know if he would have gotten to us on the waiver wire,” Dallas GM Jim Nill told the Star. “You can never have enough defencemen. You need that depth.
“He’s a character guy, and we like how he plays. He plays the game the way (coach) Jim Montgomery likes to play. He moves the puck well.”
In another twist of fate, Carrick now plays mostly with another ex-Leaf, Roman Polak, who signed with Dallas over the summer as a free agent. It was Polak’s return to the Leafs last year that dropped Carrick down the depth chart and made him a frequent healthy scratch.
On top of that, Carrick, a righthanded shot, now plays the left side — his weaker side. In Toronto, Carrick couldn’t break into the lineup regularly even with Babcock hungry for righthanded shooters.
Carrick’s puck-moving ability and hockey smarts and Polak’s grit and physicality have found a home in Dallas.
“You need different elements on your team,” said Nill. “Our back end is pretty skilled, but we lacked size and that physical element. And Roman kills penalties. He’s a good fit for us.” Carrick — who played 130 games over three seasons in Toronto, with eight goals and 16 assists — wasn’t getting powerplay time ahead of Morgan Rielly or Jake Gardiner as a Leaf. Now he and Polak will have to find a way to contain the offensive juggernaut that is the Maple Leafs. They’re going to see ice time against one of Auston Matthews, John Tavares or Nazem Kadri.
“It might feel like practice,” said Carrick. “I have an idea of what they want to do offensively. The whole league does now. They’ve got a lot of high-end talent. “The NHL game has gotten so skilled, so fast … Toronto has a lot of different weapons. It will be a good test for our defence.”