Friday Fun Facts: Dallas Stars Gear, Memories, Nicknames, and Nuggets

One of the most enjoyable things about covering the team more closely this year is all the little tidbits you pick up in random conversations and interactions. Sometimes they turn into a bigger story, and other times they play perfectly into an AfterThoughts piece or an analysis article.

But other times, they just sort of sit around until I decide they’re better off being sent out into the world to live their lives, free and unencumbered by the pages of my notebook. So, without further ado, I present the following Fun Facts about the Dallas Stars:

• You’ve often seen Evgenii Dadonov referred to as “Daddy,” which is an obvious one, given his last name. But because that was also the nickname of Jason Demers (to those who were around the Stars ten years ago), I’ve wondered if Dadonov has another one. Well, apparently he does. After the game last night, Tyler Seguin was told that Dadonov was now 4-for-5 on penalty shots in his career. He then turned to Dadonov across the dressing room, and shouted to him, Poppy “Papi! You’re four for five??” (To which Dadonov responded, somewhat coyly, “Oh, I thought I was five-for six or something.”)
  
  Anyway, the big story here is that Dadonov is also called “Papi” by Seguin, at least. And given that Seguin was around for the Demers/Daddy era, it’s good to know someone on the team is making these crucial distinctions.
  
  Note: I should give credit to Saad Yousuf, who reported this nickname last season, though it sounds like only Joe Pavelski was using it at the time. Just another instance of Seguin stepping into that leadership role.

• If you’re a fan of the English Premier League, you may be distressed/delighted to know that Nils Lundkvist is a Tottenham Hotspur supporter. Yes, that would be the same club who just gave Ipswich Town F.C. their first Premier League victory in over 20 years.
  
  I’m told Esa Lindell is a Liverpool fan, probably because he just hops on bandwagons. Thankfully, the wonderful Jani Hakanpää was a beacon of integrity and good taste in supporting Arsenal, the only true proper club to support if you are someone who loves the beautiful game and wants good things to happen to people who deserve them. And no, I would not like to discuss Ben White’s surgery, so please stop asking.

• According to Head Equipment Manager Dennis Soetaert, Tyler Seguin was the first Stars player he recalls using the quickly replaceable metal runners when a player needs an edge re-sharpened. If my research and guesswork is correct, that probably would have been the Bauer Vapor APX2 in 2013. The ability to quickly pop an edge out and replace it with a fresh one revolutized the skate-sharpening process in-game. Before then, Soetaert said the only real option was for a player to completely unlace a skate and hand it to a trainer to take to get re-sharpened by hand. Soetaert said he has a lot of memories of sprinting down a hallway with a skate that desperately needed to be re-sharpened while the player stw on the bench with one bare foot, waiting for him to get back. Times have changed.

• Speaking of gear, it’s been interesting to see how frequently new gear begins to get “worked in.” The Stars skaters have been cycling in a lot of their Blackout helmets and gloves during practice lately despite still being a couple weeks away from using them in a game, and Casey DeSmith even wore his entire Blackout setup at practice on Wednesday (which made Sam Nestler and I both second-guess whether it was a different goalie altogether). DeSmith told me during training camp that he doesn’t mind breaking in new gear at all, and actually tends to prefer using newer pads to older ones, whereas other goalies often want to work in their gear a lot more before using it in games.

• Finally, let’s end with a short little story. Given the Winnipeg Jets’ unreal run in their first 16 games, I was remembering the Stars’ own sort of streakiness in the 2019-20 season (before the stoppage). If you remember that year, it’s when Dallas started 1-7-1, then turned around and went 14-1-1, then lost six in a row in the lead-up to the COVID stoppage, only to go the Stanley Cup Final in the bubble.
  
  So the other day, I asked one of the players who was around for that season if he remembered what put them on that run: Jamie Benn. After going back and forth politely for a few moments trying to jog his memory by talking about it being Pavelski’s first season, the year Montgomery got fired, and so on, Benn then told me he didn’t remember that the team had rolled off streaks like that in that early season. But he then turned and said, “But Roope might remember,” and he turned to Hintz, whose stall neighbors Jamie’s. Hintz then responded immediately to Benn and me that yes, he absolutely remembered that, didn’t Jamie? And Benn said something to the effect of, no, but wow.
  
  Sometimes, players can claim ignorance in order to avoid talking about subjects, or to obliquely communicate that they aren’t going to answer a question without having to say “I don’t want to talk about that,” as even that direct response can end up creating a salacious story for more voracious media outlets. For my part, I am usually happy to give players the benefit of the doubt unless it’s something that truly needs to be discussed.
  
  In this case, I genuinely believe that Jame Benn doesn’t remember the start of that season. After all, that was less than a year after the Lites tirade, just a few months after the wrap-around attempt against the Blues in overtime, a few months before Montgomery’s unprofessional conduct and firing, the Winter Classic, and the COVID shutdown and subsequent bubble run. I can’t blame anyone for letting a stretch of regular season games slip from their memory banks in that context. But it’s always nice to chat with Jamie Benn about the olden times.
  
  For the record, he still remembers a lot about Jaromir Jagr. The newly married Benn smiled when discussing Jagr’s career a few weeks ago, mentioning that Jagr’s dedication and hard work have always been incredible, both in Dallas and throughout his hockey career. Of course, Benn also made sure to point out that Jagr isn’t married. Or rather, he is, but just to the game of hockey.