Changes are happening as the Dallas Stars have finally decided to go all-in on the rebuilding of the team. On March 24th, the Stars traded 13-year vet and former team captain Brenden Morrow to Pittsburgh. This past Tuesday, the day before the trade deadline, the Stars shipped leading scorer Jaromir Jagr to Boston, center Derek Roy to Vancouver and Tomas Vincour to Colorado. The Stars received draft picks and prospects for all of the traded players.

In an open letter to the fans, Stars president Jim Lites acknowledged that all of the roster changes might be hard for fans to take but said that the moves were in the best interest of the team going forward.

“We did our best to maximize the value for each player and did the best we could for the future of the Dallas Stars,” Lites said.

This all comes after significant changes to the team over the summer and the past few seasons. Of the 21 players on the active roster, only 12 were on the team at this time last year, while only six of those players played large roles in the season before that.

The Stars will now look to its new core, comprised of forwards Jamie Benn and Loui Eriksson, defensemen Trevor Daley and Alex Goligoski and goalie Kari Lehtonen, to lead this team. The recent trades have opened doors for younger players to take on bigger roles with the team. First year standouts Antoine Roussel, Brenden Dillon and Cody Eakin have been with the big club for the entire season, making plays on all sides of the ice.

The Stars should be very active in moving players between the NHL and the teams’ AHL affiliate, the Texas Stars, for the rest of the year in an effort to expose as many of the younger players as possible to hockey at the highest level. The Texas Stars sit atop the AHL’s Western Conference, exhibiting what is one of the deepest prospect pools the Stars have had in team history.

The Stars currently sit 13th in the Western Conference. Though, thanks in large part to the lockout shortened season, the Stars find themselves only two games out of eight for the final playoff spot. The team is very much still in the playoff hunt, but the eyes of the franchise are turned towards the future. And the Stars future looks brighter than ever.