DALLAS — Cody Ceci keeps it simple on the ice.
“Play a hard style, try and help shut down some other team’s top players,” said Ceci, a 12-year NHL veteran.
His presence on the Dallas Stars blue line has helped the team to its third-straight Western Conference Final, an amazing achievement, especially considering the adversity the Stars faced with their defensemen this season.
“It’s been a game-changing acquisition for us. I don’t know where we’d be without him,” said Stars head coach Pete DeBoer.
Ceci grew up in Ottawa, Canada, with a rink in his backyard that his mom — a figure skater — helped maintain.
“She had us skating pretty young,” Ceci said. “My dad played football, so he didn’t really want us figure skating. That’s how we all ended up playing hockey.”
Ceci also played lacrosse in the summer to hone his stick skills, even though a future in hockey wasn’t guaranteed.
“In high school, I wasn’t really even thinking about the NHL,” Ceci said. “I was more focused on playing in the OHL (Ontario Hockey League). From there, goals got higher and higher.”
Now the former first-round pick is in the playoffs for the eighth time, but he’s still searching for his first Stanley Cup.
Ceci arrived in Dallas just days after Nils Lundkvist and Miro Heiskanen suffered injuries that kept them both out for the rest of the regular season.
“Where we anticipated slotting him in with a healthy team isn’t what’s happened, but he has had that ability to elevate and play as a top-two guy, in a top pairing,” DeBoer said. “And we wouldn’t be playing still today without that contribution from him.”
It’s a role that Ceci never envisioned after being part of the Edmonton team that lost in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals last year.
“Only got home at the beginning of July, and then all of a sudden, I was getting traded at the end of August,” Ceci said. “It was a bit of a shock.”
He was then traded for a second time in five months when Dallas grabbed him from San Jose at the beginning of February.
“The older you get, you see more of the business side of things,” Ceci said. “The first time you get traded, you’re gutted. Now, I look at it as more of a cool experience to go somewhere new and play with some new guys.”
Now he’s got the chance to beat his old team and make a return to the finals.
“It will be a little weird. I’ve got a lot of friends on that side, but we’ve been pretty quiet last week leading up to this,” Ceci said. “I think we’ll be quiet till the end of the series.”