DALLAS — It’s not as if Mats Zuccarello didn’t know he was going to be traded. In the last year of his contract and the Rangers in full rebuild, the 31-year-old Norwegian could read the handwriting on the wall well before the Feb. 25 trade deadline.
“I kind of knew this summer, almost, it was going to happen,’’ Zuccarello said Tuesday, after the Stars’ morning skate as Dallas prepared to host Zuccarello’s old team, the Rangers. “But when you get closer and closer to it, it becomes a reality. And I was kind of — not sulking — but I was sad about it for a long time.