With mere days left until the big club hits the ice to officially start preparations for the 2014-15 season, the Dallas Stars prospects will try to cap off a great run at the Traverse City Prospects Tournament today in the championship game.
The baby Stars will take on the baby Columbus Blue Jackets at 6 p.m. central time. Both teams went undefeated in their round-robin play, Dallas picking up a 4-3 overtime win over the Rangers, a 4-2 win over the Hurricanes and a 7-3 thumping of the Sabres. The Jackets have plenty of offense as well, averaging six goals per game.
Both teams are missing dangerous offensive weapons, with Dallas’ Brett Ritchie out with a broken finger and the Jackets’ Sonny Milano out with the extremely painful sounding facial fractures.
There’s no audio stream, let alone video, for this as far as we here at DBD can tell, but the tournament scoreboard will have continuous updates for the game, and you can the great Mark Stepneski on Twitter for live updates from Traverse City as well.
Consider it practice for the Stars preseason games, where we all wait with baited breath while Twitter and NHL.com refresh.
For those interested, here are the eligibility rules for the tournament:
For those wondering about eligibility rules for Traverse City tournament, here they are. #CBJ pic.twitter.com/Knyt4O9puS
— Rob Mixer (@RobMixer) September 16, 2014
A fun little tidbit: According to how both Stepneski and I read these rules, Valeri Nichushkin likely would have been eligible this season (he was born in 1995 and obviously only has the one year of experience in the NHL, AHL or ECHL – the 18 games of KHL experience are what throw a slight question mark out there). Just puts into perspective how young that kid still is.