Stoll, on trade-deadline anxiety

The trade-deadline wheels continue to slowly turn. With 10 days until the deadline, there’s still more talk than action, although two Western Conference teams have picked up pieces in the last 24 hours, with San Jose adding Tampa Bay’s Dominic Moore and with Nashville adding Montreal’s Hal Gill. Following up on Justin Williams’ thoughts from the other day, regarding trade-deadline anxiety for players, Jarret Stoll expressed similar sentiments. Stoll has never been a part of a midseason trade — he moved from Edmonton to the Kings in the summer of 2008 — and said he doesn’t get caught up in deadline anxiety.

STOLL: “It’s everybody’s choice. Sometimes guys, especially young guys, they’re online checking the blogs or whatever. You can get caught up in it if you want to, but the bottom line is, you’ve got to worry about your game, your team and winning games, playing good hockey. That’s all you can control. That’s all you can worry about at this stage. That’s it, really. It’s black and white. Let the people that are the powers that be makes those decisions and make those moves, and leave it at that.”

Question: Some guys say the whole thing is overrated, that it’s really not a distraction for players…

STOLL: “Yeah. It’s for you guys in the media to speculate and talk about it and report it. That’s really all it is. Our job isn’t to do that. Our job is to play hockey and try to win games. But yeah, some guys are going to look at it, read articles and stuff like that, and it won’t bother them. Some guys do that kind of thing, and it does bother them. Those are the guys you’ve got to watch, and make sure that they have the right attitude.”

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