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As a Dallas fan..
The trade does make sense on paper, and I think the values are within reason.
Neal is the most expendable of our wings. He's putting up pretty good numbers again, but he just doesn't look like the dominant player that he started out as. In the past, he'd just take over the game during his shifts. He'd pressure & hit one D-man and force a bad pass, then skate over to the other scrambling D-man, lift his stick and rip the puck away and re-establish possession in the zone. I haven't seen that level of play in quite a while..
However.. with all of that said..
Although this trade may indeed go down, I personally do not want to mess with the Stars' top 9.
Our group had extremely good chemistry before the recent slump. The forward play carried the team & gave confidence to the D and goaltending. That's how we were 1st in the division for 80 days. Our best chance to make the playoffs and make some noise there is to get back to that kind of play, not changing the balance of the team and trying to do something different.
The common assumption is that Dallas needs a PMD. But that's not our problem right now. The problem is that our forwards aren't playing like they did when we were winning - in large part due to long-ish term injuries to key players.
If Dallas makes a trade to add a D-man, I want it to be a strong veteran leader. Not necessarily a PMD type. And I don't want it to mess with our top 9 forward group.
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