While the thought early today was that newly re-signed Dallas Stars defenseman Brenden Dillon would not take part in the team’s scrimmages and workouts in Cedar Park this weekend, that may not actually be the case.
The immigration and visa issues that always hold things up for a few days, at least for those pesky non-American players, seem to be well in process at this point, and the venerable Mike Heika is reporting that Dillon will rejoin the team Saturday morning in the greater Austin area.
Brenden Dillon is scheduled to skate in Cedar Park on Saturday morning. We’ll see if he gets in the scrimmage.
— Mike Heika (@MikeHeika) October 3, 2014
It’s so much easier to get those elusive visas when you’re a bona fide elite athlete.
The official site is reporting that Dillon “should be available” for Saturday’s scrimmage, and Stars coach Lindy Ruff says there’s a good chance both Dillon and Cody Eakin could get in to Sunday’s Texas Stars preseason game. This would likely be on some sort of conditioning assignment rather than a traditional send down (to avoid the sticky waivers issue), and it would serve to get both players more competitive ice time before the season opener next week.
If Dillon gets into the scrimmage, it will be interesting to see how he’s used and, specifically, who he is partnered with. Ruff has kept the one pairing most are sure of in Trevor Daley and Alex Goligoski on the same team. Dillon spent time in a fair number of combinations last year but had particular success near the end of the season with Jordie Benn.
That could remain a pairing, or the Stars could try to spread out the relative experience of Dillon and Benn (both at a little more than 100 career NHL games) with the much more inexperienced Kevin Connauton, Patrik Nemeth and Jamie Oleksiak.