Saturday the Dallas Stars released their season schedule for the 48 game regular season. Since this season will be cut short due to the NHL lockout, there will be no cross conference games this season. All NHL will face two of their division rivals four times, and the other two five times. The remaining thirty games will be faced against the rest of their conference  three times each. The Stars are scheduled for seven sets of back to back games this season.

Below are some notable games for the Stars.

Saturday January 19th vs. Phoenix.  The first game of the season and home opener

Sunday January 20th @ Minnesota. The first time the Stars face the new look Wild with Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.

Friday February 8th vs Anaheim. Division rival Anaheim makes their way to the American Airlines Center to take on the Stars.

Saturday February 23rd vs San Jose. Adam Burish makes his return to Dallas with his new team, division rival the San Jose Sharks.

Thursday March 7th @ Los Angeles. The Stars will travel to the Staples Center and take on the defending Stanley Cup Champions Los Angeles Kings.

Monday March 25th and Friday March 29th vs. Minnesota. Minnesota will travel to Dallas and play the Stars March 25th and four days later these two teams will face off again in Dallas, no games in between for the Stars.

Monday April 1st – Friday April 5th vs Anaheim. Certainly in what is the oddest part of the season, the Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks will face off for three straight games against each other. Monday April 1st the two teams face off in Dallas, then Wednesday April 3rd and Friday April 5th the teams will play each other again in Anaheim’s Honda Center.

Saturday April 27th vs Detroit. Detroit will come to Dallas in what will be the final game of the regular season and final home game for the Dallas Stars.

You can view the full Stars’ schedule here

Stephane Robidas (Photo taken by Melissa Grissom)

#3/ Defenseman

March 3rd, 1977 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

5’11/ 196 lbs

GP: 75

G: 5

A: 17

P: 22

+/-: -5

PIM: 48

Contract Status: 2 years at $3.3 Million Dollars

Boston throws out Zdeno Chara for half of each game, Nashville has the dynamic duo of Ryan Suter and Shea Weber playing the majority of minutes on the back end, and down in Dallas we have Stephane Robidas who fills those shoes, every game he suits up knowing he will be going head to head with the best forwards of the opponent that night and obviously not the biggest player by a long shot, but amongst many players and coaches Robidas is noted as one of the toughest to play against and where he lacks in size he makes up for in heart in determination. This has not gone unnoticed as Robidas was voted TSN’s 2009 No Guts, No Glory champion (an unofficial award) for taking a shot to the face breaking his jaw in a game against Phoenix, but only missed one shift putting a cage on his face and logging more ice time than any other skater that night. Since the retirement of Mattias Nordstrom and the departures of Phillipe Boucher and Sergei Zubov in 2008, Stephane Robidas has averaged about 24 minutes a game and if you take every game Robidas has played since the 2008 playoffs that is almost 7,500 minutes of him taking a beating from big forwards and also handing out crushing body checks of his own.

Stephane Robidas has been with the organization for a long time in two tours of duty, including being traded in the 2003-2004 season to the Chicago Blackhawks for Jon Klemm and returning to Dallas as a free agent the very next offseason. He is second only to Brenden Morrow amongst active Dallas Stars in career games played in a Stars uniform, (632 of 799 career NHL games) and one All-Star appearance in the 2009 All-Star game in Montreal.

Robidas is a part of the aging leadership core in Dallas and in all those games and all those minutes his health really started to take a toll this season with injuries and often being exposed by other teams top lines and at the age of 35 with young rookies like Brenden Dillon looking for a spot on the NHL roster next season and possibly first round draft pick Jamie Oleksiak getting a look at NHL ice time some point next season will the Stars be better suited moving Robidas to a team that has a better spot for him possibly as a strong second or really good third pair defenseman, and moving on possibly making room for a free agent and moving the veteran leadership responsibilities to Trevor Daley and Alex Goligoski.

Is Matt Carle a good fit for Dallas? (Photo: Bridget Samuels/Flickr)

The Dallas Stars once again found themselves on the outside looking in this postseason, but there is always a bright light at the end of a tunnel and for the case of the Stars our bright light has been scouting. Many players from playoff teams might be looking for new homes this offseason and Dallas is a very good destination.  This offseason is very important for the Stars, for the first time in four seasons the Stars will be a real player in free agency. The sour side is that this class of free agency is more on the weak side with two big names that pop out (Zach Parise & Ryan Suter) the constant media draw that those two bring I believe one guy is completely being overlooked and that is Philadelphia Flyer defenseman Matt Carle.

Matt Carle is a 6’0 ft. 205 lbs. defenseman from Anchorage, Alaska. Drafted 47th overall by the San Jose Sharks in the 2003 NHL entry draft.  Just coming off his seventh NHL season the twenty-seven year old defenseman will be entering Unrestricted Free Agency for the first time. The Philadelphia Flyers are having a bit of a offseason salary cap mess as they already have twenty players under roster and 61.2 million dollars in cap space taken up before the 2012-2013 season even starts and with a new extension to Nicklas Grossmann and the difficult situation surrounding team captain Chris Pronger, Matt Carle should definitely be looking for a new home and Dallas would be a great stop for him, let’s analyze the positives and negatives of Matt Carle in a Stars uniform.

THE POSITIVES OF MATT CARLE:

• Matt Carle is a relatively healthy player, only missing two regular season games in the past three seasons which would help a Dallas defense that had issues staying healthy at numerous times this season
• Carle is constant 35-40 point threat from the blue line, the Stars lead scoring defenseman of the 2011-2012 season was Alex Goligoski with 30 points (9G, 21A). And his career high for PIM’s for a season is 36
• In Philadelphia, Carle was partnered with Chris Pronger taking on the top lines of their opponents and even after Pronger went down with severe post-concussion syndrome Carle stayed as the top defenseman and still made a solid contribution to his teams regular season and playoff run where he was a consistent two-way defenseman scoring 6 points (2G, 4A) in 11 postseason games.
• Every season of his career Matt Carle has gone to the postseason at just the age of 27 Matt Carle has 84 games of playoff experience including Philadelphia‘s Stanley Cup run against  the Chicago Blackhawks.

THE NEGATIVES OF MATT CARLE

• This doesn’t really reflect Matt Carle, but the state of the Dallas Stars defense is really tricky. first the Stars have 5 defenseman already under contract with (Robidas, Goligoski, Daley, Pardy, and Brenden Dillon looking for a roster spot next season, and Philip Larsen, Mark Fistric, Jordie Benn and Sheldon Souray all looking for new contracts difficult decisions and some familiar faces will not be here next season whether Matt Carle or a new defenseman joins the team or not.
• Matt Carle at 6’0 205 pounds is not exactly the biggest guy and possibly could make our defensive core look really small which the Stars have had problems with since Derian Hatcher left in 2003, and which was the reason for the signings of Adam Pardy and Sheldon Souray last summer.
• Matt Carle was paid 3.43 million dollars last season and will definitely be looking for a nice pay raise. I don’t believe he will be looking for Christian Ehrhoff (10 Million) or even Shea Weber (7.5 Million) money, but he will definitely be looking to make 5-6 million a season with this deal and possibly a limited to full No Movement Clause.

So in perspective Matt Carle‘s good outweighs his bad and whatever team he signs with will be getting a complete under the radar defenseman who will bring a lot of options. He can play in all situations and has a lot of postseason experience. He would be a great option for the Stars to look at other than Ryan Suter who will be looked at by almost everybody.