Dallas Stars sign D Karlis Skrastins to two-year deal

The Dallas Stars strengthened their defense Thursday by signing veteran defenseman Karlis Skrastins to a two-year contract. Skrastins played with the Florida Panthers last season.

Skrastins, who will be 35 next Thursday, is a 6-foot-1, 210-pound lefty-shooting defenseman who had 4 goals and 14 assists for 18 points this past season. He has 27 goals and 88 assists for 115 points in 679 NHL games, plus 3 assists in 20 Stanley Cup Playoff games.

Skrastins was second on Florida's defense and fifth on the team with a plus-9 rating while averaging 20:33 of ice time.

It's the second loss this week from the Panthers' defense. Jay Bouwmeester was traded Saturday to the Calgary Flames for defenseman Jordan Leopold and signed a five-year deal with Calgary.

Skrastins was traded to Florida by Colorado, along with a third-round pick in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft for Ruslan Salei on Feb. 26, 2008. He broke in with the Nashville Predators in 1998, just a few months after the Predators made him the 230th pick of the 1998 NHL Entry Draft. He was 24 at the time and had played extensively in the professional leagues in Latvia and Finland. Nashville traded him to Colorado for a third-round pick in 2004.

Skrastins is a good bet to play for the Latvian team at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. He has played on four Latvian Olympic teams and represented his country 11 times at the World Championships.

While Skrastins uses his strength in many situations, he is not an overly aggressive player. He had only 30 penalty minutes last season and has 313 PIMs in his 679 games. He had only 39 hits last season but a back injury early in the season may have made him cautious. He blocked a team-high 171 shots and had 19 giveaways.

Skrastins took only 55 shots. He saw very little time on the power play but averaged 3:14 of penalty killing, third-highest on the Panthers' defense.

In Dallas, Skrastins joins a defensive corps that includes Stephane Robidas, Trevor Daley, Nicklas Grossman, Matt Niskanen, Mark Fistric and Andrew Hutchinson. Veterans Sergei Zubov and Darryl Sydor are unrestricted free agents, and their futures in Dallas are uncertain.