Scott Wheeler ranks Dallas' prospect pool No. 31 at The Athletic. Does that check out?
Probably. But I'm more interested in his observations.
It’s been a quiet year for me in terms of covering prospects, in part because I figured it would be a quiet year for the prospects themselves. I knew this would be a unique season for Dallas with a new coach and the Olympics. So I didn’t give the time I would have preferred to watching the AHL, OHL, NCAA, WHL, etc.
So far I’m not sure that’s even been the case. Justin Hryckowian and Arttu Hyry have seen varying degrees of NHL action, with Hryckowian outright claiming an NHL spot complete with a walk-of-fame star. Hyry has been more of a reinforcement, but he’s made enough of an impression to force depth players like Nathan Bastian into the chicken finger pressbox; in part because he’s been an absolute manbearpig on the dots, winning 64 percent of his faceoffs, posting the sixth-best faceoff differential among Stars forwards in only five games. Not bad for two undrafted players.
Meanwhile Matthew Seminoff, Tristan Bertucci, and Trey Taylor have brought quality performances to the AHL squad. Most of these players are on the older side, which keeps them from being classified as prospects, but the team is clearly making do when it comes to amateur scouting. It seems evident that Jim Nill and his scouts feel the same way, as none of them were made available at the trade deadline; just futures1.
Predictably, the end result is a prospect pool that rates poorly compared to the rest of the league. Of course, it’s not a big deal. When you’re elite, you’re not supposed to have an elite prospect pool. As one of the objectively best-drafting teams in the NHL, nobody will or should care about how the leftovers rate.
But I’ll always use any excuse to talk about prospects.
To be clear from the outset, Wheeler has forgotten more about prospect hockey than I’ll ever know. My intention here isn’t to shine a spotlight on someone at The Athletic being wrong on the internet. Although I’ll certainly go there if I have to2. Rather, I like the idea of comparing his ranking to mine. Not only do we get to compare and contrast a professional’s opinion to an amateur, but you get to see the overlap and disagreement.
