"How Do We Replace Carbo?"

exerpted from articles by Mike Heika for The Dallas Morning News
and Jennifer Floyd for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 12, 2000

The hot topic of the early season is how to replace Guy Carbonneau, one of the game’s all- time best two-way players, penalty killers and faceoff specialists.

"I don’t think anybody is irreplaceable," Carbonneau said recently. "It might take awhile, but...I wish I was there sometimes taking faceoffs, too. It’s not easy for anybody; you always kind of look back sometimes. Same thing when you lost Patrick Roy in Montreal. Any goalie that is going to come in after that [will have to face], ‘Oh, Patrick would have been better, he would have stopped that shot.’

"I think it’s going to take awhile. I think Romy [Roman Lyashenko], if given a chance, is going to be good. He might not be 50 percent on faceoffs, but he’ll get more goals."

It was only a slight surprise when Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said he has high expectations for Jamie Langenbrunner in his attempt to replace retired center Guy Carbonneau.

Hitchcock’s message is clear—there will be no pining for Carbonneau this season. While an outstanding player and fan favorite, Carbonneau was just a man in Hitchcock’s world. And anything he was able to do, the Stars should be able to find a way to do in a different way.

But the specter of Carbonneau could haunt the Stars this season. The 40-year-old center stood for everything that helped the Stars win the 1999 Stanley Cup—experience, guile, veteran will, leadership. So the quest to fill Carbonneau’s vacated role is, in some way, a microcosm of everything the Stars are trying to accomplish.

They have to find a way to reshape the team so that what’s gone won’t be missed. That might be by finding a newer, younger version of the same player, or it might be by using the differing talents of players they have to help do the same job.

And right now, there’s no agreement on the right way to go through this process.

"I’ve been through this before, and I know you don’t try to replace a guy or try to be like him. You have to play your game and you have to find out how you fit into the system," veteran center Kirk Muller said. "Guy was a great player, and he had a knack for the game that he had learned from playing all of those years. You can’t just expect a person to have what he had. He was special."

"We all know what Guy meant to the team; we all saw what he did and how he did it. And I take a lot of pride in the fact they’ve picked me to do this," Langenbrunner said.