Ben Bishop’s professional hockey career as a player is over. According to Dallas Stars’ general manager Jim Nill, the goaltender’s playing days are over. This comes after the news was announced that the Stars had recalled the netminder from his conditioning stint with the AHL’s Texas Stars and placed him back on LTIR.
A current knee injury is making it impossible for Bishop to make a comeback and Nill told Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News:
“It’s no secret, he has a degenerative knee injury, and he went down there, he wanted to be a big part of this. He wanted to do everything he could to get back. In the end, by going through the process, going down there and playing, he found out that it’s the end of his career.”
Bishop played 11 seasons in the NHL, notching a 2.32 GAA and a .921 SV% in 413 games. Bishop won’t officially retire seeing as he’s got one more season on his current deal after this one. Now 35, he was a three-time Vezina finalist, ending his career with 33 shutouts over 11 years with Tampa Bay, Dallas, St. Louis, Ottawa and Los Angeles.
What Does This Mean for Stars’ Goaltending Situation?
There was a lot of chatter that the Stars might be shopping Anton Khudobin and trying to move a netminder because they had too many bodies. The Bishop news removes one goalie from that equation, but it doesn’t necessarily change the Stars’ plans to shed themselves on a backstop.
With Braden Holtby and Jake Oettinger still likely to get most of the starts, Khudobin is a piece that could still move. The Stars merely have a three-headed monster problem, not a four-headed one.
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