Breakfast Salvos: Which Star to watch at the Traverse City prospect tournament, and a way-too-early look at the Central competition
Who should you be watching tonight besides Stankoven, Bourque, and Bichsel? And what's brewing in the Central?
The Traverse City roster is out and it’s nuts.
What stands out about it (even more than previous years) is the raw amount of depth. You have two blue chip (for Dallas’ system anyway) defensive prospects in Lian Bichsel and Christian Kyrou. You have two blue chip forward prospects and a baker’s dozen worth of what I consider tier two players.
Unfortunately the Traverse City tournament is not about prospects playing their way into the lineup, at least this year. It’s about prospects showing where they are in their development path and forging chemistry with some of their potential peers. Obviously, all eyes will be on Logan Stankoven and Mavrik Bourque.
However, don’t expect their performance to have Nill or DeBoer re-think how to construct their NHL roster. As is, DeBoer will have a controversial decision to make in scratching one of Sam Steel (who has established himself as an everyday NHLer over the past two seasons in Minnesota), and Ty Dellandrea — who needs to be an everyday NHLer. Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would think they can steal someone’s spot at this point. More than likely, Nill and Co. will use this tournament as a barometer for who he has the edge in the call-up race when injuries inevitably hit.
Sidebar: For those who aren’t aware, the Detroit Red Wings will be streaming the tournament. Here’s a link on when, where, and how to watch.
https://www.centreice.org/page/show/467296-nhl-prospect-tournament
Who to Watch (Besides the Obvious)
I’d expect the usual suspects to shine. However, one player to keep specific tabs on is Christian Kyrou. What interests me about Kyrou is that he doesn’t play the kind of game that coaches like to trust. To be honest, I have a hard time even seeing how he gets a shot if Nils Lundkivst remains part of Dallas’ long term plans. I’ll even go so far as to say I don’t think Kyrou ever makes it in Dallas. I know that sounds grim but it’s the reality for most second-round picks anyway so a hot take this ain’t.
Nonetheless, Kyrou has gamebreaking offensive talent. The question for him will be whether or not he’s cleaned up his defense, or in place of that — whether he’s improved his skating.
Kyrou isn’t a bad skater; he’s just a flawed one. Skating has undergone something of an evolution. Where it used to be that defenders could be flat-footed while forwards needed to be agile or fast, those roles have largely switched. Now defenders need to be smooth skaters while forwards can be plodders. Kyrou doesn’t simply need to be exceptional; he also needs to be the exception. Still, if he puts it all together, watch out. I don’t believe there’s a single defender in Dallas’ system that has his level of puck control or shooting from the backend.
Switching gears, if you follow my work then you know I love posting Mitch Brown’s tracking data. Yes, they often constitute a small sample size. Yes, they very often change from season to season. But within that sample are over a dozen different elements that get tracked. As a result, I find them informative in terms of revealing a player who plays or has potential to play a detailed game.
One of Dallas’ prospects I haven’t talked about (really anywhere) looks phenomenal on Brown’s tracking data. So much so that he rated in a higher percentile than Will Smith, who went fifth overall to San Jose in the 2023 draft.
The kid? 6th round pick, Angus MacDonell.
MacDonell split his time between the OHL’s Sarnia Sting and the Mississauga Steelheads playing a depth role. He’s been described as a pesky type more than a scorer but the data suggests something very different. Keep in mind, I don’t think four games worth of data, no matter how extensive, means much of anything. Nor do I think MacDonell is better than one of the 2023 draft’s best centers. I never approach analytics as a way of saying “here’s Exhibit A and Exhibit B.” Instead I like to approach analytics from the perspective of language.
Should we talk about MacDonell as a ‘depth guy’ as his role suggests or as a potential ‘transition facilitator’ like the data suggests?
This is my favorite thing about data; being able to cut through lazy verbiage. We no longer have to call a shutdown defender a shutdown defender just because that’s what he’s always been called. Instead we can call him by his on-ice impact. So what kind of language will we use about MacDonell as he develops?
The other two guys to watch are Oskar Bäck and Remi Poirer. Personally, Bäck doesn’t interest me. Like, at all. But he was a beast in the AHL playoffs, and in terms of NHL readiness, he has a profile coaches love. Bäck might be the only Dallas prospect who could come in and replicate Radek Faksa’s game, which makes him a real option in the near-future, allowing DeBoer to mix things up. (Still don’t like his potential inclusion. Dallas has a lot of up-tempo forwards they could slap onto their fourth line that I think would cook more paired with similar profiles versus the puck-protector cycle type with no offense like Bäck.)
Poirier is the other, in part because Scott Wedgewood has suffered a few more injuries than you’d like to see in your otherwise capable backup. But also because he was so dominant in the ECHL, and then didn’t look super out of place in the AHL.
Who should Dallas fear in the Central? (Plus an angry development rant)
The Colorado Avalanche are not the team they once were. Minus Nazem Kadri, Gabriel Landeskog, Erik Johnson (not a big deal on the surface until you realize his replacement his Jack Johnson), and Alex Newhook (I thought it was stupid of them to let him go), they’re a team that seems more like a darkhorse to contend at this point than an active favorite. Like all contenders/winners, they’ve also been hit with the proverbial cap crunch. With all their significant contracts already signed, they have just one more year to do what they can with Devon Toews, who’s about to command serious money on the open market.
How serious? According to Evolving-Hockey, his next contract will be $8.05 million per year for an expected term of eight years (!). Do I think he’s worth Miro Heiskanen money? No, but let’s face it: Heiskanen is underpaid and a player can be overpaid and still be worth it.
(New to analytics, tired of seeing these but don’t really understand them? Check out my casual critic’s guide to analytics.)
Point is, Colorado won’t be able to afford him. Not unless they do something drastic.
So why fear them? Because you only need one good year. Colorado has a potential ace up their sleeve this year with the 10-year reunion of Jonathan Drouin and Nathan MacKinnon. They looked good getting an early start before development camp. I didn’t become a draft nerd until 2013. Seth Jones, a top hockey prospect from Texas, was a really cool story, which is why I started paying more attention. I didn’t know all the names but I knew about Jones, and I knew about Nathan MacKinnon and his Halifax Moosehead teammate Jonathan Drouin, who tore up the QMJHL together. MacKinnon has since become one of the game’s best players, and a Cup champion. Drouin has since become a classic bust.
Thing is, what makes a player a bust is not always on the player. In fact, my general rule is that hockey adults don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Is that fair? Maybe not. But riddle me this: I’m supposed to expect that a league that still has the ridiculous CHL-NHL agreement in place — an agreement even the CHL recognized isn’t good for at least one of its players — and who recently brought Bill Peters’ punkass back…actively has some high level philosophy on how to nurture a player’s maturation process? As the old southern proverb goes: that dog don’t hunt.
I don’t want to repeat what I’ve already discussed here at the Stars Stack. You know where I stand. Prospects don’t succeed alone. They damn sure shouldn’t fail alone. But that’s the way the NHL likes it. They want you to think that the kids are the fools, and not the adults; as if the adults have ever displayed some seamless blend of overlapping developmental principles between player and personnel (cough) despite the fact that they have the same old infrastructure in place with the same tired minds overseeing it. That’s not to paint hockey with a broad brush. I just think it has a lot of work to do.
Don’t at all be surprised if Drouin, who admittedly has dealt with personal problems in addition to a slow development curve, uses his time in Colorado to be re-born. If that happens, that team is back.
Why does everyone love Winnipeg?
Dom.
What code are your models smoking? There’s definitely no love lost between myself and the Rick Bowness era. But I would like to think that I was always clear about my problem with his coaching. Modern hockey is simply too hostile to a defense-first system. Bowness showed zero interest in trying to adapt, and he’s still doing that thing where he throws his players under the bus. Does Bowness do this because he’s a jerk? On the contrary, he seems like a do-right kind of guy. The problem is that he’s so blind to the inefficiencies of his system that any failures of it have to be attributed to the operation of it (i.e. player effort) rather than the design of it (i.e. toothless forechecking).
However, the Winnipeg love is also instructive of the blindspot that general analysis has when it comes to off-ice components, like coaching. How often do you see national writers talk critically about coaching or GMs? My theory is that this comes from an approach to analysis that has always been stuck on the extreme ends of the qualitative (you could play a deadly drinking game to the amount of times Pierre McGuire would always scream “will over skill!”) and quantitative (<posts histogram with zero explanation>) spectrum. The things I believe that can bridge those two together — coaching, video tracking, systems interplay, and matchup analysis — are rarely emphasized (hey hey; I have a good excuse!). This is why I love Corey Sznajder so much. He’s not following the paradigm. He’s creating his own and hockey analysis is better for it.
This is also why local coverage is so important in the context of analysis. Much of what I learned about Pete DeBoer has come from writers like Sheng Peng at San Jose Now, Jesse Granger at The Athletic, and Ben Gotz from the Las Vegas Journal. So please, dear Winnipeg fans: I say this with love. If you want to know why the Winnipeg Jets will always look like they’re iceskating uphill this season? Read local.
Asterisk: I’ll eat crow if I’m wrong. I actually thought their return on Dubois was mint. I’ve been unusually high on Rasmus Kupari (really liked him at 13th overall in 2018 over Dellandrea), and I think Vilardi and Iafallo are excellent. But mix in Bowness’ system with their best players starting to age out of their peak windows (Connor and Ehlers specifically; one of whom gets a short leash for “reasons”), Morrissey not shooting hot next season like he did last, and Hellebuyck/Sheifele’s uncertain future…yea; I don’t get it. And I don’t see it.
Thomas Harley Art
I deliberately avoided posting the full Thomas Harley set in my recent video analysis because A) It made the post too long for email and B) it made more sense to spread these out anyway. So here’s the full set.
(The “riddle of steel” reference should be obvious to people with too much time on their hands like me but if it’s not, here it is.)
