Dallas Stars' Movember Efforts A Smashing Success

Lady luck did not look too kindly on the Dallas Stars on the ice during November. The team went on a 5 game losing streak, lost key players to injuries (see: Goligoski, Alex; Lehtonen, Kari; Burish, Adam; Morrow, Brenden to name a few.) Lady luck was good to the team off the ice, however, for the month of Movember.

The Dallas Stars Movember team raised over $12,000 dollars for men's health and awareness. That places the Stars as the second highest donation getting team in the NHL, behind only the Toronto Maple Leafs team. Last year, the Stars got into Movember kind of late and did not garner as many contributions as they could have if they had started from day 1. Movember team captain Mark Fistric wanted to make sure the Stars team got on it from the outset, and his wife helped organize the team and get everyone's Movember pages setup.

What resulted from the Fistrics' commitment to the cause was a great success for the team.

The Dallas Stars had 9 different players participate in the Movember fundraiser:

Mark Fistric (Captain)
Eric Nystrom
Steve Ott
Vernon Fiddler
Jake Dowell
Stephane Robidas
Krys Barch
Alex Goligoski
Andrew Raycroft

The Stars had 7 of their 9 players participating raise over $200 each. Three Stars players raised over $1500 each (Fistric, Ott, Nystrom.) When looking at the NHL team page rankings, Nystrom is ranked fourth overall in the NHL Movember network in individual donations, with only three Toronto Maple Leafs team members ahead of him. Fistric comes in at #18 and Steve Ott came in at #19 in individual donation rankings.

Another fantastic byproduct of the Movember movement: Mark Fistric joined Twitter (@Fistric28) to help promote Movember. The month of Movember also saw Steve Ott join the Twitter world (@otter2nine) and he may have the best byline of any hockey player on the social media platform: "Loved by many, Hated by many...MORE." Both Stars players utilized Twitter to help up their donations and post picture updates of the staches they rocked this month.

When Defending Big D spoke to Movember captain Mark Fistric, he said he was going to try to make it out to the Dallas Moustache Stache Bash celebrating the end of Movember. The cocktail party hosted by Hotel ZaZa is at 8 PM tomorrow and is $25 a ticket. All proceeds go to the Movember effort. For tickets click here. Come on out, celebrate the end of Movember, and offer up one more donation to this very worthy cause!

Congrats Stars on a job well done! And special thanks to team captain Mark Fistric and his wife for all of their efforts to promote the Movember movement within the team and community. It wouldn't have been nearly as successful without them!