Dickinson working to prove he belongs as everyday player

DALLAS -- Sometimes you make a plan, and sometimes the plan makes you.
Sometimes you map out where you want to go and what you want to accomplish because it's better not to leave things to chance, whether it's a hockey career or anything else.
And sometimes the true test of a person's mettle -- their character, if you will -- is how you react when the plan has other ideas, when the signposts that were to have pointed you in the right direction become turned or twisted.

You could say that is so for the entire Dallas Stars team as they face the sobering prospect of missing the playoffs after looking for most of the first three quarters of the season like a team that seemed locked in on a postseason berth.
And it is certainly so for one of the team's top prospects in Jason Dickinson as he moved in the second half of the season from a frequent call-up from the American Hockey League -- where he was one of the Texas Stars' top two centers -- to a constant presence around the Dallas locker room, especially with the season-ending back surgery required by center Martin Hanzal in early March.
Before being sent back down on Monday afternoon, one day after Dallas was officially eliminated from playoff contention, Dickinson had been allowed to approach each day without wondering when he would get that tap on the shoulder or hear the buzz of his cell phone telling him this stay is over and he has to return to the minors and leave, at least for the moment, his dream of being an everyday NHL player.
"It's a little different knowing that you're not going to wake up tomorrow and get a phone call, 'Hey, you got to go down and play tomorrow get yourself ready,'" Dickinson said during a recent interview withDallasStars.com. "So it's a little bit different. You can get up and you can just focus on the next game, and you can focus on the next day and not to think about, oh, what's going to happen? There's still a couple of hours left in the day, anything could happen.
"It's a little bit different to prepare yourself mentally and it helps calm the anxiety a little."
But let's be honest, anxiety and being a rookie in the NHL are constant bedfellows. And maybe the anxiety goes up when you're a first-round draft pick like Dickinson and a player that came out of junior hockey with considerable buzz.
Former NHLer Scott Walker coached Dickinson in Guelph not far from Dickinson's hometown of Georgetown, Ontario. He praised Dickinson's impact both on and off the ice with the team.
"Ultimately, he's a coach's dream," Walker said recently. "He plays the same way no matter what the score is."
The term "200-foot player" is an overused one, Walker said. But it applies to Dickinson.
He was a leader on and off the ice, a favorite of teammates and fans.
Whatever he was asked to do, whatever role, Dickinson embraced it, Walker said.
"In junior guys don't accept roles or don't accept the things that he did and was asked to do," Walker added. "He's one of the top two or three all-time favorite players that I ever coached."

It has, in many ways, been a season of adjustment and acceptance for Dickinson.
He has had to adjust to frequent call-ups -- sometimes call-ups that resulted in being sent back down to Texas without pulling on a Stars' jersey. And he's had to adjust to the fact that when he became a regular the learning curve at the NHL level has been very steep.
"I kind of felt around Christmas time, I started to feel like I was a really a part of two teams this year," he said. "I was no longer just a call-up. I felt like I was a part of two teams and it was either my name was on the board in Dallas or my name was on the board in Texas, so I wasn't too worried about how to feel about going up and not playing or being down in Texas.
"Either way, I was just trying to prepare myself to play the next game."
In Dallas, he has played some on the wing, but also a lot at his natural center position since Hanzal's season came to a close with spinal fusion surgery required to repair an ongoing back issue.
Hanzal, one of the top two-way centers in the game, won't return until next season.
In the wake of Hanzal's permanent departure from the lineup, the Stars passed through the deadline without making any moves. Part of that was general manager Jim Nill's insistence on keeping intact the team's young prospects, who were being groomed in Texas with the team's AHL affiliate and points elsewhere. Dickinson was one of those parts that Nill felt was important to keep, and his elevation to the big club on a permanent basis in recent weeks provided a terrific test for Dickinson, even the results have been mixed.
On a recent road trip that saw the Stars go 0-4-2 and drop out of the playoff picture, Hitchcock praised Dickinson's play against Toronto, but noted a drop-off in the team's next game in Ottawa.
"Whatever his 'A' game is, we need him to bring it," Hitchcock said at one point.
For a team whose struggles to score and whose struggles to generate depth scoring through a franchise-worst eight-game winless streak were pronounced, certainly the hope was Dickinson would be able to generate more on the offensive side of the ledger. He has failed to score in 27 games at the NHL level this season, adding two assists compared to 16 goals scored in 36 AHL games.
But that's how the journey goes sometimes.
For Dickinson, who has always been very self-critical, it has been a challenge to make sure he's not dwelling on how things have gone differently than he'd imagined.
"Every coach I've ever played for, it's been a pretty similar message to try and relax and just brush things off. I completely understand where they're coming from -- where they see the frustration in me, but I like to build up this frustration in a moment. But as soon as the moment's gone, it's gone," Dickinson explained.
"I get on myself so that I don't forget what happened. I don't treat it as if it's just nothing so that I mark it, 'that's not okay, that needs to be fixed,' but then, it's gone. And then, what maybe after the game, I'll stew on it a little bit, but the next day, I am usually over it."
As for the plan taking a different course, that too has taken some coming to grips with for the well-spoken 22-year-old.
"For the most part, I don't think it's played out exactly how I would imagined, but I mean, I'm still in the lineup, I'm still playing games in the NHL," he said. "So, I got to take every little bit that I can, and just because I had this plan in my head that I'd be an NHL regular and I'd be scoring all these goals and putting up all these points, that doesn't mean it's going to happen. So, I just got to go out there and try to take advantage of the time."
Dickinson scored in his first-ever NHL game last season, on a pass from Val Nichushkin, who is playing in Russia this season. This season, he added his first NHL assist and, recently, his first NHL fight -- although he might want to rethink the frequency with which he drops the gloves, having tangled with the very tough Nicolas Deslauriers of the Montreal Canadiens.
But if the points have not come in the quantity his junior and AHL stats suggest are possible, Dickinson is doing his best to take the long view.
"Yeah, I've had to learn a lot about myself this year, and just going through all this, it's all new to me," he said. "I've been fortunate enough that throughout my young career in junior and the first couple of years in Texas that I've been a regular. I've known where I was going to be. I've pretty much always had a spot on the roster for a game night, so it's new it's different.
"I've always been pretty level-headed, so I understand that there are things I can't control. And that all I can worry about is just working hard and doing the things that I know how to do. That's all I tried to bring to the table, and everything else, I just tried to let go. But it's very easy to get frustrated and let it creep under the skin."

Last Thursday in Minnesota, Dickinson saw a string of 14 straight appearances with the Stars -- the longest stretch of regular action in his young career -- come to an end as Gemel Smith replaced him for a critical game against the Wild.
Over those 14 games, he never once played as much as 10 minutes in any one contest.
Hitchcock, asked about Dickinson's absence from the lineup, responded in general about the challenge for young players in the Stars organization to learn on the fly.
"I think this is a tough league right now," Hitchcock said. "This is a really tough league at this time of year. I think what all of them have found out is that post-trade deadline, the temperature goes way up, and I think they're all finding that and it's been a real battle for him to keep up.
"They've done fine. But it's also a very serious league from the trade deadline on, and I think they're finding that -- that every game seems like a single-elimination playoff game. And even during the games, themselves, especially in the third period, the temperature goes way, way up and it's good learning curve for them. It'll help them in their careers."
The best part for Dickinson has been in the opportunity to learn and to understand just what being an NHL player entails. It's a complicated life in many ways and he has done his best to learn from those who have traveled this path before him.
"Just being able to come in every day and learn," he said. "I've been playing competitively for 15 years. I've been learning more and more every year, so it's invaluable what all the players on this team (and) all the coaches bring. I can't soak up enough.
"Talking to the veteran guys on the team, like Spezza and Radulov and the little bits from Seggy (Tyler Seguin) on faceoffs. Just like little things, like that there's so much I can still learn, and I think that's the best part, to me, is I want to keep growing and I want to keep grabbing little bits, and there's so much that can be taken from every guy."
As for what he's learned, big picture, is what it means to be a part of a group that is relentlessly honest with itself, even in the face of adversity.
"I found that this group of guys is so welcoming and so honest with each other and they want the best out of everybody, and they're not afraid to hurt feelings and guys aren't afraid to have their feelings hurt," Dickinson said. "They take it for what it is and learn, and it seems like there's no hard feelings after if anybody has to say anything."
If there is a takeaway or maybe a challenge that comes from the crushing disappointment of this late-season swoon for the entire team, it will be in self-reflection.
How did it happen? How can things be changed from player to player to ensure such a fall from grace doesn't happen again?
For Dickinson and some of the other young players who got a healthy taste of life as an NHLer, maybe the judgment will be less severe. At any rate, Dickinson will leave the reflection for the end of the season. There are other matters to attend to in the short term.
"I don't think now's the time to think like that," he said. "Maybe once the year's all said and done and I'm sitting at home, I can sit there and go, 'Wow, you know what, that was a pretty special time of year to be with this team.' I tried my best. I had an impact. I did good things. Kind of give a little bit of props to myself. But right now, I think it's not the time to fall in love with yourself or get too hard on yourself.
"It's time to just buckle down and forget about yesterday and move on and play the next game because that's all we can think about is the next game."
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.
Scott Burnside is a senior digital correspondent for DallasStars.com. You can follow him on Twitter @OvertimeScottB, and listen to his podcast.
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