Patrick Sharp may have played his last game in Victory Green on Friday night. The morning after the Dallas Stars’ 6-1 win over the San Jose Sharks, the team announced that he would bow out for the rest of 2016-17 to undergo hip surgery, scheduled for Tuesday.
Reportedly, Sharp has been troubled for months by the issue, but he played through as the team struggled to fulfill its faint playoff hopes. It was generally assumed that Sharp, a pending UFA with an elite résumé, would be moved to a Stanley Cup-contending team before the 2017 NHL trade deadline.