What's it like to be dealt at the deadline? Stars share their experiences

One minute you're riding a bus to a game in New Jersey andboom,you're off to Dallas and life charts a course you might never have expected.
This is how Greg Pateryn remembers the trade deadline.

Or you're getting ready for a game in Glendale, Arizona with the team that drafted you, and for whom you've played every single game of your NHL career, and boom --they're handing you a couple of sticks and your gear and pushing you out the door to start your new hockey life in Minnesota without really saying goodbye.
This is how Martin Hanzal remembers the trade deadline.
Or you're in your backyard in Atlanta and boom the general manager of the only team you've known calls you to tell you you're headed to Dallas, opening a fresh new page on not just your hockey career, but your life.
This is how Kari Lehtonen remembers the trade deadline.
Ben Bishop?
He remembers the trade deadline as a three-act play. Each one marking a seminal moment in his career, each a kind of stepping stone or a significant signpost on life's journey.
The NHL's annual trade deadline (Monday, 2 p.m. CT) is a festival of rumor and speculation, and hoping for the home-run deal, whether you happen to be a buyer or a seller.
But the human element of the trade deadline and what it means to teams and players and families -- and, yes, careers -- can sometimes be overlooked in the rush to anoint winners and losers.

So let us start with the Dallas netminder, whose first deadline trade came in 2012 when he was a member of the St. Louis Blues. Pushed down the Blues depth chart by the play of Brian Elliott and Jaroslav Halak, GM Doug Armstrong found Bishop a place to play in Ottawa when Senators starter Craig Anderson suffered a freak hand injury making a sandwich. Bishop signed an extension with the Blues and then was on his way to Ottawa, where he got his first taste of being a starter while Anderson recuperated.
"That was really good for me because I got to splay seven (or) eight games in a row in March when we were in a playoff hunt, and then Craig came back and took over," Bishop recalled. "So I kind of had that starting mentality."
A year later, having enjoyed several long stretches of starting for Anderson, Bishop was with the Senators in Boston on a road trip. They'd done team yoga in the morning and he was lying in his hotel room watching Twitter and the internet debate percolate over where he might be traded.
"The tweets were going out saying Edmonton, Philly, Columbus. So I was just lying there, and I got a call from our team services guy and obviously I knew something had happened," Bishop recalled.
Finally, Senators GM Bryan Murray was on the phone telling Bishop he'd done as promised and found him a place where he could compete for a starting job. He was going to Tampa Bay.
"He told me Tampa and I was really excited, obviously. Good opportunity," Bishop said.
With Murray's passing last summer, it's a moment that still resonates for Bishop, who gathered his belongings and flew that evening to Carolina, where he played the next night, stopping all 45 Hurricanes shots to earn his first shutout as a member of the Lightning.
Over the next four years, Bishop would twice be nominated for a Vezina Trophy as the NHL's top netminder. He helped the Lightning to a Stanley Cup final berth in 2015 and an Eastern Conference final berth the following year.
How is life different for Bishop and the Lightning if that deal isn't consummated -- if Bishop is a Flyer or Blue Jacket?
A year ago, though, Bishop was at his home in Tampa, and his fiancé was just about to head out to the grocery store to pick up dinner when GM Steve Yzerman called.
"She was walking out the door and I got a call from Steve Yzerman and I told her to hang on a second. And he told me that he traded me to L.A." Bishop recalled.
A few minutes later, the Kings called and told Bishop they wanted him on a 9 o'clock flight.
In the morning? No. In about three hours.
"I didn't even have time to do laundry. I had to take like dirty laundry and stuff," Bishop said. "I had to pack up everything. I had, in a couple of hours, to go to the rink get my stuff and then I was on a plane to Minnesota. So that was a little hectic."
If the first two trades were moments that were opportunities beckoning, last year's trade was a reminder of the passage of time and the sometimes harsh nature of the business. Bishop no longer fit economically in Tampa with Andrei Vasilevskiy ready to be a starter and so, heading toward unrestricted free agency, he had to be turned into assets.
"That was a lot tougher because I'd been in that organization for four-and-a-half years had a lot of success. It was unfortunate that I wasn't able to say the proper goodbyes to a lot of people, which was kind of sad," Bishop said.
He called a trainer, who helped him get his stuff from AMALIE Arena. And then, he was gone -- no goodbyes to his neighbors, arena staff, training staff or coaching staff.
"It's tough because you have a connection to the city and to everybody, and to be just kind of gone in a matter of minutes, I think that was a little tougher because I definitely wanted to thank a lot of people, and you don't have the opportunity to do that," Bishop said.
"I mean, you knew it was coming. But obviously, when the trade happens, and it happens that quick, it's a little bit tougher, I think, because you feel like it's just being ripped away real quick."

Hanzal can relate.
A first-round pick of the Coyotes back in 2005, Hanzal was approaching free agency last summer, and with no contract talks tabled with the 'Yotes, he knew he was going to be traded before the deadline. It was just a matter of when and to whom.
"In my situation, I was (excited). I knew it was coming, so I was kind of hoping to get over with it early so I can focus on hockey again," Hanzal recalled. "Because when you're just waiting, waiting to see what happens, see which team you will be part of. So I was kind of just excited that it was over, and I could join the new team and just focus on hockey."
Last Feb. 26, Hanzal arrived at Gila River Arena in Glendale for a game against Buffalo.
"I just drove to the rink. I enjoy coming a little early, so I was first guy there and the coach, Dave Tippett, just grabbed me and said, 'Hey, listen, it's getting close. You might not be playing tonight.' He just told me, 'Get ready and see what happens,' " Hanzal said.
Sure enough, as he was preparing for the pregame skate, Tippett pulled Hanzal into his office. He was going to Minnesota.
"It happened so quick, so fast because the guys were getting ready for the game," Hanzal said. "So I just got dressed (in street clothes). They gave me my hockey bag, couple of sticks and I was on my way."
"I said goodbye to guys, but again, it happened really quick. I just pretty much shook their hand and I had to get out of there because they were getting ready for the game," he recalled, still shaking his head at the absurdity of it all.
Hanzal flew to Minnesota and played the next day, and then the night after that in Winnipeg.
His family had already departed for the Czech Republic a week earlier to wait out the trade process, and it wasn't until he'd been in Minnesota for a few days that the enormity of what had transpired struck Hanzal.
"Again, everything happens so quick, so fast. You didn't even realize, okay, I spent here 10 years and they just gave me my hockey bag and told me to leave, you know?" Hanzal said. "I think it kind of got to me when I went to Minnesota. I played a couple of game (and) that's when I started more thinking about it. I didn't say goodbye to him or him. I just started sending text messages (saying) thanks for everything. But it's tough."
"I think it's tougher for guys like me when I spent 10 years there and my kids were born there," the big center added. "I had so many friends outside of hockey, too. I was drafted there. It's tough, but it's part of a hockey player's (life). Sometimes it happens like this, so you just have to start focusing on hockey and kind of put this aside. And it's hard, but it happens a lot."

Lehtonen, like Hanzal, had spent his entire career in Atlanta, where the Thrashers had made him the second-overall pick in 2002. But in the 2009-10 season, he was rehabbing from back surgeries and the Thrashers were once again bound for nowhere. It was just prior to the Olympic roster freeze when Lehtonen got the call he'd been traded to Dallas.
"Yeah, I had a feeling that it's a possibility," Lehtonen said. "I hadn't played the whole year -- I was just coming back from a couple of back surgeries. I really wasn't thinking about it too much. I just wanted to get back playing and maybe, I thought that, maybe, change would be good for me personally, and that all kind of worked out."
As soon as his wife told him it was GM Don Waddell on the phone, he knew his life was about to change.
"He said, 'We dealt you to Dallas,' and I remember thanking him for the opportunity he gave me in drafting me and that was that. And then he said somebody will call you from the new team," Lehtonen said.
Lehtonen flew to Dallas while the team was on a road trip. He worked out with the skills coach at the time and then met the team in Phoenix, although he didn't play before the Olympic break.
"So then, I had two weeks. I found a place to rent, and it was nice. I got to go home and we packed everything, and then did 13 hour drive," Lehtonen said. "With a little bit of stuff and our three dogs, I think, we had at that time. It was really neat experience just to see the country with my wife. We were excited to go to a new city. She's from Atlanta, so she'd never lived anywhere else. So, she was also excited."
Almost immediately, Lehtonen felt the move was going to be a good one.
"I was just excited," he said. "Get to go to new place and start kind of from zero and then, especially how I then saw how things are run in Dallas. The only thing I knew was how everything was in Atlanta, and then I realized, many things they do in Dallas differently, and I really liked how things were done. I don't know how to explain it better."
A big change? For sure. But maybe, it's just how it's supposed to be.
"Whatever happens is meant to happen," Lehtonen said. "At least I used to go crazy before, thinking I might get dealt. You just use so much energy worrying about something you have no control over, and if something happens, there's a really good chance it's going to be a great thing. People are always too worried or scared of change, I think. It was a great thing that happened, but if they would have asked me on that day, 'Do you want to get traded to Dallas?' I probably would have said no."

Hard to imagine a more dramatic change of fortune for one player year-over-year than what has transpired for Pateryn.
A season ago, Pateryn was getting on the Montreal team bus in New Jersey to prepare for a game against the Devils. Pateryn had played 24 games for Montreal, a player not quite in the Habs' plans and with an uncertain future when he got the call from Montreal GM Marc Bergevin that he was a Dallas Star, going to Texas in exchange for Jordie Benn.
"There was a weird vibe going on in the morning, so I think everyone had an idea something was happening, and no one really knew what," Pateryn said. "I was that guy. I was happy. My time was up in Montreal and I got a great opportunity here now. It's always easy to look at it in hindsight."
After biding his time at the start of this season, Pateryn has emerged as one of the surprises of the Stars' season, pairing with veteran Dan Hamhuis to create an effective shutdown defensive pair, on whom Dallas head coach Ken Hitchcock relies heavily against opposing teams' top offensive lines and on the penalty kill.
A life-changing moment?
"Yeah, definitely. That's the way I look at it," Pateryn said. "I always had an idea the type of player I wanted to be in the NHL, and the type of player I could be. And I've been given such a great opportunity to show that here, and to be able to go out there and have the opportunity to do it every night, it's all I've ever wanted.
"I think that in itself has been an accomplishment. I like the direction this team's moving. It's really fun to be a part of."
This story was not subject to 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.