Who’s next for the Dallas Stars: 5 candidates for jersey retirement

Last Friday, the Dallas Stars honored one of, if not the best defenseman in franchise history. The number 56 of Sergei Zubov now hangs in the rafters with other franchise greats. His number now sits with the likes of Neal Broten, Bill Goldsworthy, Bill Masterton, Jere Lehtinen and Mike Modano.

This got me thinking, though. Is there another player out there that deserves to have their number hanging in the AAC rafters? Of course there are several factors that go into this decision and I’m not sure there’s a player (former or current) that meets these requirements.

Will we see another Dallas Stars Jersey Retirement Soon?

You have to think of longevity when talking about players who could potentially have their numbers retired. And by longevity, I don’t mean just their playing career. I also mean how long they played for the Stars.

For instance Ed Belfour played in 963 games spanning 19 seasons but he only played five seasons with the Stars.

Derian Hatcher is one that is intriguing. He started out in Minnesota with the North Stars in 1991. He moved to Dallas and played in Dallas until the 2003 season. Although he didn’t have flashy numbers because of his position, he was critical to the Dallas Stars winning the Stanley Cup in 1999. Hatcher only had one year where he scored double digit goals.

While with the Stars he only had one season where he had single digit assists. That was the first year. The longevity is there but the numbers are not. Compare his numbers to Zubov and it’s not close. Zubov constantly scored double-digit goals and even racked up 70+ points twice in his career (once with the Stars and once with the Rangers).

So is there anyone else from the cup-winning team? I’d say probably not. Brett Hull wasn’t here long enough. Neither was Joe Nieuwendyk.

Then what about the teams after the cup? Brenden Morrow spent 12 seasons with the Stars before playing two seasons away from Dallas. He finished his career with 265 goals (249 with Dallas). Trevor Daley played his first 11 seasons in Dallas before landing in Chicago. Daley was a fan favorite, for sure, but I’m not sure he had the numbers to warrant a jersey retirement.

The one that gets brought up the most is goaltender Marty Turco. Turco spent nine years with the Stars and had some amazing years as a goaltender. In 02-03, he finished with a mind-blowing 1.73 goals against average. The crazy part, though, is Turco had three seasons in his career where he had a goals against average below two. He had nine shutouts in 03-04 and seven in 02-03.

While playing for the Dallas Stars, Turco finished with a record of 262-154-63. The knock on Turco during his career was that he was a great regular season goalie but struggled in the playoffs. His playoff record was 21-26. He did lead the Stars to the Western Conference Finals once.

Three of his five years in the playoffs, the Stars lost in the first round. The most impressive series loss, though, came in 07. The team lost to Vancouver in seven games. Turco had three shutouts and a goals against average of 1.30 in that series.

All of that and I still don’t believe it’s enough to get his number 35 in the rafters. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there’s another player that will have their number retired for a while. We will have to see what happens with this current group of guys. There are some players that could definitely see the celebration.

We will see if any of them get there.