2024 NHL Draft Profile: Why the Dallas Stars must make a decision between Adam Jiříček and Ben Danford

Let's have a debate.

If you’re not a draft nerd, well, you should be. When it comes to prospects, some make the cut but many don’t. Regardless, every journey, whether it’s Julius Honka or Logan Stankoven, can help make you a more informed hockey watcher. This will be the final entry in our individual profile reports.

I know I said I’d be profiling defensemen Colton Roberts, but I thought we’d have ourselves a way more interesting time here if we looked are two completely different defensemen in Adam Jiříček and Ben Danford. It’s the battle between Mr. High Floor and Mr. High Ceiling.

The Bio

For Jiříček

• Date of Birth: Jun. 28, 2006

• Age: 18

• Height: 6′2

• Weight: 187lbs

• Position: Defense

• Shoots: Right

• Team: HC Plzen (Czechia)

For Danford

• Date of Birth: Feb. 06, 2006

• Age: 18

• Height: 6′1

• Weight: 185lbs

• Position: Defense

• Shoots: Right

• Team: Oshawa Generals (OHL)

What the pros are saying

Below I’ve highlighted a few choice quotes from the most familiar, and most respected public outlets.

For Jiříček

From EPRinkside (ranking him at #28):

• A lot to like from Jiříček. He’s already ahead of his older brother at the same age in some ways. Continued with his aggressive pinching and tight rush defence while not making any big misreads or errors…A lot of good retrievals where he scanned multiple times, gained body positioning, faked with his edges or tapped the opponent’s stick before receiving the puck. Smart

  puck-moving under pressure for the most part. Sense looked above average.

From Scott Wheeler (ranking him at #22):

• He doesn’t have quite the presence his brother has, but Adam plays the game with confidence and intention and has shown real ambition at times against his peers. He’s got good four-way mobility, an active disposition (he has also shown at the pro level that he can simplify and play a more effective game), balanced shooting mechanics, and an eye for spacing and for identifying opportunities to jump on both sides of the puck, plus legit skill with the puck to build upon. There are definitely tools and room to grow his game and fill out his frame. He’s also competitive, I like his defensive habits and he's got size and ability.

From Corey Pronman (ranking him at #15):

• When healthy, he's a 6-3 right shot who skates quite well. His skating allows him to make a lot of stops and be strong going back to retrieve pucks. Jiricek uses his big body well and competes for pucks. Offensively he doesn't stand out, but he has some skill and moves pucks efficiently. It's hard to tell which version of Jiricek we saw this season is the real one, but it's probably somewhere in the middle..

For Danford

From EPRinkside (ranking him at #30):

• Ben Danford thinks the game in a more advanced way than most. He knows how to defend in-zone and how to move the puck up the ice, but he couldn’t always execute his ideas in the early parts of the season. The puck would spring off his stick in the middle of a manoeuvre and he would trip attempting to pivot and close in on an opponent. But as his technical ability and offensive touch improved, his success rate went up.

From Scott Wheeler (ranking him at #58):

• Danford gets high marks as a person and as a player who takes care of his own end first but is developing his offensive instincts and starting to take more chances off of the line and involve himself in more plays around the offensive zone. He also shows good poise under pressure to hold pucks with players on his back and find ways to spin off and head-man. His skating is average or maybe slightly above. I wouldn't call it a strength but it's decent and he did well in testing at the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game (where he also showed those developing offensive instincts and played well at both ends in the actual game) and the combine. More importantly, the details are already there (stick placement, gap control, reads, positioning, etc.).

From Corey Pronman (ranking him at #29):

• Danford skates quite well. He's able to escape pressure with the puck and skate pucks up ice like a pro. Defensively he closes on pucks quickly, and competes well enough to win a lot of close races. Offensively he's not dynamic, but he's quite smart with the puck. He makes a lot difficult passes, often while skating with pace.

Unimaginative, misleading comparables

For Jiříček

• J.J. Moser

• Nick Leddy

• Kris Letang

• Oliver Ekman-Larsson

• Mike Reilly

• Brandt Clarke

For Danford

• Brandon Carlo

• Artem Zub

• Matt Dumba

• Adam Larsson

• Ryan McDonagh

• Matt Roy

The numbers

Before looking at these numbers, it’s important to note that Jiříček played in a professional league while Danford did not.

Not sure what this chart means and need a quick and dirty explainer? I’ve got you covered! Click here to learn more from a man who knows less.

Both have really interesting microprofiles. Jiříček was exactly the player he’s been billed as, with a massive impact on shot generation from the backend. While he rates poorly overall, he’s oddly average in terms in the offensive zone (said to be his strength) and the defensive zone (said to be his weakness). However, again, different leagues. Against his peers at last season’s U18s, he looked like a beast. Nonetheless, it’s a lot of data for when Jiříček was healthy, and raises questions from a purely micro point of view.

Danford just looks genetically engineered to play the position. Rating better than 95 percent of his peers in the defensive categories define by Mtich Brown, and completely competent everywhere else, I’m honestly shocked that Danford isn’t mentioned more. I also think having passing chops at the position is way more interesting, and sustainable than being able to generate shots. Sure, it’s great to have an Evan Bouchard, but these players are extremely rare, especially in this day and age.

The tape

For Jiříček

For Danford

Personal observations

For Jiříček

Jiříček is a really fascinating prospect in general, and would be even if he didn’t have a brother who was highly touted. What’s interesting is that all the scouts seem to lament his mechanics, which, since I’m not a skating expert, I’ll defer to them on. But David St. Louis’ (first video) analysis only identifies it as flawed rather than fatal. For my own eyes, I see a skater who I’d describe as fluid in spite of his flaws.

This is an important point because the premium on a defensemen’s ability to skate has never been higher. With the way forwards move nowadays, beyond just the speed, defenders have to be able to keep pace. So I can’t really tell. What I can say is that I think all the elements are broadly there for an impact defender: he processes the play well in all three zones, and has a real mind for offense. The way he’s able to open up lanes reminds me of Bouchard at times. In many ways, he’s the complete package, which makes you wonder what would have been had he played the full year.

For Danford

Danford is a defenseman. The old kind.

He looks like a player who can defend in his sleep; I mean that as a compliment. There are times when he makes neutral zone sequences look effortless. If he were only a couple of inches taller, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t be talking about him in the same breath as Charlie Elick and E.J. Emery. Interestingly, he’s by far the most physical of the three. However, unlike another first round talent who will not fall to the Stars (Stian Solberg), Danford knows how to calibrate that physicality (not a knock on Solberg, who is an absolute throwback in the best way) without being wishy washy. He can be calm, aggressive, patient, or mean.

His movement is solid. Like Jiříček, there seems to be disparate views of his skating. Because his positioning is so good, I think it explains why his skating may appear ‘somnambulent’ for lack of a more pretentious term. When needed, the acceleration is there, and he appears to even have some power. He’s not what I’d describe as fast, but he has loose puck speed when he needs it. The offense may not be there in terms of shooting, but he knows how to read a play, defensively or offensively, which reminds me of Lian Bichsel. And that’s why his passing microdata rates so inexplicably well. As far as I’m concerned, Danford has no weaknesses.

There can be only one

I’m of twenty different minds on this. We’ve been on quite the run of profiling a lot of high-floor, shutdown defenders with “untapped offensive potential.” And there’s a reason for that: there’s value in those players, maybe now more than ever. But I can’t help but think about that Dallas Edmonton series. Evan Bouchard is nowhere near the defensive defender that Miro Heiskanen and Chris Tanev are, but his control of offensive lanes had such an outward impact, it didn’t matter how well Heiskanen and Tanev defended. Keep in mind, that’s not to say Bouchard was better than the two, or that he’s the reason Edmonton won (although he certainly helped, tallying 7 points in 6 games). Have Bouchard defend Connor McDavid and see how that goes. But in the same way you need your top forwards to play defense, you need your top defenders to generate offense. Hockey is too much of a three-zone game, and Jiříček has all the tools and then some to be that kind of impact player. The fact that he might fall to Dallas is something nobody would have called when early drafts had him certified in the top half of the first round.

Still, the draft — despite how casual fans typically describe it — is not about uncertainty. You draft players who add certainty to your prospect pool; because you know they have less to work on, because they process the play at a pro level, and because what they provide from shift to shift already looks better than what you’ll get out of your replacement level veterans. That’s the Danford profile. He’s old-school physical with new-school skills. He ‘understands the assignment.’ And unlike a lot of the high-floor defenders we’ve been looking at, his floor is exceptionally high. It’s always funny to me how players with more hard skills are always talked about as if they’ll grow exponentially while players with more soft skills can only grow marginally. This might be loosely true in a vacuum, but Danford doesn’t look he’ll fit into these convenient little stereotypes. The fact that his maturity will only get stronger makes him a super enticing selection.

This is a tough one IMO; a decision that cuts through the usual “BPA vs. Need” nonsense, and straight into something much more interesting, where the decision is really about conflicting philosophies rather than conflicting conventions. Both also undercut the typical criticisms lobbed at players with their profiles, with Jiříček being more capable defensively, and Danford being more capable offensively. I have no idea where I stand (although I’ll give you my top five for who Dallas can select at 29 on Wednesday). How about you, Stars fans?

Sick of draft talk? I’ve got your professional needs covered at D Magazine, talking about why a quiet offseason is a good thing.