MORNING SKATE: Getting waived by Stars helped re-launch Patrik Nemeth’s career

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — Patrik Nemeth’s NHL career was re-born on Oct. 2, 2017.

After parts of four seasons with the Dallas Stars, never playing more than 40 NHL games in a season, he was placed on waivers as the odd-man out of a nine-player competition on defense in Stars training camp.

It could have been the end of Nemeth’s NHL season. If he cleared, he would have assigned to the AHL’s Texas Stars, and with the logjam in the NHL likely never would have re-surfaced on the Dallas blue line.

Instead he was claimed by the Colorado Avalanche, the first team in the waiver order, and was given a second chance at an NHL future for the 2017-18 season.

“You never know, you might have an idea, but you never really know what’s going to happen,” Nemeth said on Saturday. “So it was a kind of tough 24 hours there. In my situation it was maybe a little bit what I wanted to do, since the situation was what it was in Dallas.”

Nemeth instantly became a staple for the Avalanche defense on the second pairing. He’s often paired with Tyson Barrie (who is currently out with injury) and has become one of Colorado’s best penalty killers. Nemeth is averaging 18 minutes, 42 seconds per game in time on ice, and that number would be higher if not for a couple games missed and an ensuing recovery period for injury.

“He’s been real good for us, played solid and gave us stability back there,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said. “I think he’s elevated his game here recently. He’s a real strong heavy defender, defending mentality comes first for him, he’s done a nice job on our penalty kill, and recently he’s been getting up in the play a little bit and provide some offense.”

Bednar said Nemeth’s play made an instant impact for the coaches.

“We were pretty impressed with, and that’s what you need a player to do coming into a situation. He made the most of his opportunity early and we stuck with him through that,” Bednar said. “Part of that is his consistency and the way he approaches each game, he’s an easy guy to get behind because he leaves it out there every night.”

It’s a chance Nemeth wasn’t going to have in Dallas.

Last season he played in 40 games with the Stars but spent most of the time jumping in-and-out of the lineup. He also was asked to jump into the play more, when a simplistic system would have fit better. He was under-used and misused and it didn’t work out.

According to multiple sources, there were trade options including Nemeth available and discussed with the Stars last season, but nothing came to fruition. In the offseason the Stars re-signed Nemeth, a restricted free agent, to a one-year deal, but he never really had a chance to win a spot in training camp.

He only played two preseason games — just like Greg Pateryn — and was put on waivers.

“I don’t want to look back too much,” Nemeth said. “I just want to play hockey now and play for this team (the Avalanche) and move forward.”

And he’s moved forward well. He has a coaching staff that trusts him, and he’s playing on a team that’s smashing expectations with more wins through 41 games than it had in 82 last season.

“You want to have the confidence and have that trust, which you have to earn it too, but you have to get a chance to earn it as well,” Nemeth said. “Right now I’m playing the way I want to play, and I’m also able get better at the same time. Confidence both in yourself and from the coaches, it really helps.”

Busting the bye

Both the Stars and Avalanche are playing their first game after the bye week.

For the Stars, coming out of the last break didn’t go so well, so coach Ken Hitchcock is hoping that’s a motivating factor this evening.

“Look, we came back off the Christmas break and we didn’t play very good, and that was a tough schedule day, so this is a little bit different,” Hitchcock said. “I’ll have a better evaluation off of this one, this one feels like you’ve got some normal time where you’re not rushed, so we’ll see how we look tomorrow, but man, you walk in you’ve got such an important game tomorrow, I think that’ll get everybody’s attention and there’ll be an excitement level, but then you’re on the road for four, so that’s going to be a challenge.”

For Hitchcock the bye would be better served next month, perhaps right around the NHL trade deadline.

“Yeah, I think the players need breaks and I think getting the breaks in the schedule is good,” Hitchcock said. “It would be an interesting discussion with the players. They need breaks to get healthy and they need breaks from the coaches, but I think sometimes too long, I think that’s the balance that you got to strike and it’ll be interesting to see their comments after a couple games because it’s not like you’re building into something.”

Avalanche projected lineup

Gabriel Landeskog — Nathan MacKinnon — Mikko Rantanen
Matt Nieto — Carl Soderberg — Blake Comeau
A.J. Greer — Alexander Kerfoot — Nail Yakupov
Colin Wilson — Tyson Jost — Gabriel Bourque

Nikita Zadorov — Erik Johnson
Patrik Nemeth — Mark Barberio
Samuel Girard — Anton Lindholm

Jonathan Bernier
Andrew Hammond

Scratched: David Warsofsky

Injured: Sven Andrighetto (lower body), Tyson Barrie (fractured hand), J.T. Compher (upper body), Vladislav Kamenev (fractured arm), Semyon Varlamov (lower body)

Stars projected lineup

Jamie Benn — Tyler Seguin — Alexander Radulov
Mattias Janmark — Martin Hanzal — Jason Spezza
Antoine Roussel — Radek Faksa — Tyler Pitlick
Remi Elie — Devin Shore — Brett Ritchie

Esa Lindell — John Klingberg
Dan Hamhuis — Greg Pateryn
Stephen Johns — Julius Honka

Ben Bishop
Kari Lehtonen

Scratched: Dillon Heatherington, Gemel Smith
Injured: Marc Methot (knee)