Top 10 Dallas Stars players of all time: No. 9 Darryl Sydor | Dallas Stars Blog

The Stars next season will celebrate 20 years in Dallas, so staff writer Mike Heika takes a look at the Top 10 players who have worn the green, black and gold.

9. Darryl Sydor – He and Zubov played a lot of games together, and Sydor ranks 11th all-time in Stars history in games played at 714. Included in that run with Dallas were two trips to the All-Star Game (1998 and 1999). He finished with 99 playoff appearances for the Stars, and he finished with four trips to the Stanley Cup Final in his career (also with Los Angeles in 1993 and with Tampa Bay in 2004 — he won the Cup with the Lightning).

Twenty years in Dallas. Well that just flew by. In the pre-bloggy days when Sydor was with the Kings, he seemed to get a lot of grief from fans who wanted too much from him, too soon. And his trade to Dallas for two knuckledraggers was the beginning of the fire sale which paved the way for the dark ages of Ferraro, Yachmanev and Burger King jerseys.

2/18/1996 LA Times (Lisa Dillman) — Kings Trade Sydor for Two Tough Guys

[...] The Kings traded defenseman Darryl Sydor and a fifth-round draft pick in 1996 to the Dallas Stars [...] for defenseman Doug Zmolek, 25, and right wing Shane Churla, 30. Sydor, who had been the subject of trade rumors recently, had been wildly inconsistent since his promising rookie year when the Kings went to the Stanley Cup finals in 1992-93. King Coach Larry Robinson quickly grew frustrated with him this season, calling him a “time bomb.”

“It’s not a relief,” said Sydor, a first-round pick in 1990. “[...] I knew it was going to happen, but I didn’t want it to happen. They wanted to get more character players in here, but I believe in myself as a character player.”

Zmolek, 6 feet 2, 220 pounds, a first-round pick in 1989, is a solid, stay-at-home defenseman. [...] Churla, 6-1, 210, a noted enforcer, has had memorable fights with King defenseman Marty McSorley. [...]

Robinson, when asked whether Churla’s arrival would pave the way for McSorley’s departure, said: ‘That’s not the case. What it does is put less emphasis on Marty and Barry Potomski and Shane. It gives us overall better toughness.”

Ah, but it was the case. Gretzky was traded within two weeks for a bunch of nothing and two weeks after that McSorley was shipped out, along with Churla and Jari Kurri, to New York for Ian Laperriere and Mattias Norstrom.

 

Some posts the robot says are related, but I'll let you be the judge of that:

1. Darryl Sutter’s Assistant Coach Checklist
2. Darryl Sutter vs. Yogi Berra
3. With the Stars’ loss tonight, the Kings’ magic number is 1
4. Dean Lombardi Trade History
5. Andrew’s Dallas Stars Blog
6. The Fourth Period: Red Wings had traded Kyle Quincey to Dallas, but failed physical led to waiver claim by Kings | Snapshots – MLive.com
7. Utterly Irrational Trade Thought Involving Other People’s Stars