Stars Stuff: Previewing the Jets game, NCAA free agent targets, Angus McDonell signs, and general prospect talk

Buckle up. This weekend the stakes are about to be raised a little higher.

Tomorrow’s contest isn’t Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals but it’ll probably feel like it for some players, and some fans. Winnipeg will be motivated to show that they’re still the Central division kings, and that they didn’t need a Mikko Rantanen¹. Dallas will want to show that regular season accolades mean nothing. Plus they can still win without arguably their most important player.

This game is critical for a lot of reasons, and I wrote about it on Tuesday. How being unable to catch Winnipeg has real consequences, and how the two teams stack up analytically with their additions. There’s no better way to swing fortunes in Dallas’ favor than to win these heads up matchups. The Jets are on pace for 111, the Stars on pace for 106. It’s obviously not a Cup but if Dallas can somehow come close to winning the Central, it’ll say a lot about their long term outlook.

I had some fun back and forth with a reader about what the numbers tell us. We know Dallas is dangerous. And we know they can score. But how do we know if they can continue to score against elite competition? How do we know some fatal flaw won’t be exposed? Did Dallas do the right thing, in going after Mikko Rantanen at the cost of buffering the blueline? If so, to what degree? Did they become more complete, more dangerous, more dimensional?

When Dallas lost to Edmonton, I did a playoff report on the offense. My argument is that it was basically a mirage on certain levels. Using sG to fuel this thesis, it’s worth reiterating what sG (or synthetic goals) actually is. sG is a single-value stat that gives you the scheduled value of a player in terms of who they are, from shift-to-shift, away from outside influences (like minutes, and teammates).

Last season Dallas only had three players who rated like first line caliber forwards (Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, and oddly enough, Jamie Benn). Wyatt Johnston was on the cusp. This season? At first glance it looks just okay. But take a closer look.

A lot of players have a higher shift-to-shift rating. Conversely, last season you had a ton of players with low shift-to-shift ratings in big minutes (Duchene, Pavelski, Dadonov, and Seguin). So that’s the good news. Again, because I don’t want this to get lost — this is not an evaluation of offensive production. I know Rantanen’s spot in there looks suspicious but that’s only if you don’t know what these charts are telling you. And guess what? That’s okay. I struggle with this myself. Think of it like this. How would each player produce if they always got to shoot against Anders Lindback?

The good news is that performance, like, production, can change. Duchene is a great example. Last season he had a poor shift-to-shift rating. Eventually that caught up to him in the postseason. This season? The opposite. Don’t be surprised if Duchene’s scoring rates maintain themselves into the postseason.

And that brings us to Winnipeg. The big bad Jets. They’re an offensive juggernaut, right? Not so fast.

A lot of their depth guys — Lowry, Iafallo, and Niederreiter — rate extremely high while their big minute guys — Vilardi, Schiefele, and Namestnikov — rate quite low.

However, there’s another element to this. The Jets’ forwards are better defensively than Dallas’. So what does this mean? Something counterintuitive, IMO: while Rantanen obviously makes Dallas better, the depth of their offense will be the primary offensive driver. Versus an elite team like the Jets, that’ll be huge tomorrow, and into the future.

NCAA free agent targets

Without Logan Stankoven, and most of their draft capital, the onus is on Dallas to get creative in replenishing their prospect pool. Enter the NCAA signing period. The NHL at large has done well to take undrafted NCAA players. The Tanev brothers. Zach Whitecloud. Chris Kunitz. Tyler Bozak. Torey Krug. Adam Oates. Neal Pionk. Blake Lizotte. Alex Iafallo. Logan O’Connor, who is for my money, one of the best bottom six forwards in the game. Of course, those are the best of exceptions.

Dallas has gone to this well before. Luke Krys. Justin Hryckowian. Gavin Bayreuther. While these are not NHL-quality players (although Bayreuther got quality time in the NHL), they’re not bad players either. Could one of the current crop of free agents yield something like a future Whitecloud, Kunitz, or Bozak? You never know.

Topping the list is center Luke Haymes out of Darmouth. The 21 year old center is 6’1, and 192lbs. As a junior, he scored at almost a point-per-game pace with 10 goals, and six assists in 19 games. For a proper writeup of Haymes, I recommend Mitch Brown’s work at EPRinkside. Thankfully, he also has a nice mixtape of the center.

What makes Haymes such a potentially good fit for Dallas is that he fits the Dallas prospect profile as of late: less a collection of skills, and more defined by intangibles such as maturity and spatial awareness². Like with players like Johnston, Stankoven, and Bourque, Haymes works well along the walls, which is crucial to NHL success.

Czech born Ondrej Psenicka is another player I find fascinating. One thing Dallas hasn’t had in their pipeline is size at forward. Perhaps Gurianov, Tufte, and Nichushkin scared them off (?). Regardless, Psenicka would add something different, first and foremost: size. He’s a 6’6 RW who scored eight goals and 10 assists in 24 games for Cornell. It’s certainly nothing earth-shattering, but players are like this are where you take your flyer: not at the draft. Having seen him first hand (finally caught some games this year of of Dallas RHD prospect, George Fegaras, who also plays for Cornell, which we’ll talk more about in a bit), Psenicka mostly stands out for his size. But he handles the puck well in tight quarters, and plays confidently with the puck. He’s not a power forward at all, but he’s certainly a player — as with extremely tall ones — that might have another development gear.

A digression: what NCAA production means

It’s important to temper expectations for anyone, though. On a strictly mathematical basis — here I’m referring to NHL equivalency scores³ — the NCAA ranks extremely low in terms of predicting the production that can translate. In fact, the most extensive research I’ve seen done on NHL equivalency scores ranks the NCAA 12th among non-NHL leagues, well below the AHL, and only barely above the ECHL.

It’s fitting that we’ve been talking about sG, since so much of what informs these discussions is trying to have a clearer image of the future. In the same way we want to know what happens to a superstar’s production in the postseason when the competition is at its most obscene, we also want to know what happens to young successful players making the transition towards professional success. What happens when they don’t get big minutes, power play time, and are forced into depth roles? This is a weak analogy, but the broad strokes are hopefully clear enough.

Angus MacDonell signs, and a note about George Fegaras

Jim Nill wasn’t done after signing and trading for Mikko Rantanen. On Tuesday he also signed Brampton center Angus MacDonell to a three-year, entry level contract. I had some people ask me about him on Twitter. I wrote about the other day when he scored a hat trick, so if you want a lengthier response, check out my prospect reports. I think they’re fun, personally.

But the shortened version is that as good as MacDonell looks, he’s playing with two of Brampton’s top three scorers: one was a 50th overall pick from 2023 (Carson Rehkopf), and the other is a future top five pick from 2025 (Porter Martone). He is not just the product of his environment; he’s the ectoplasm. That sounds like a dig, but that’s just how good Rehkopf is, and it’s definitely an example of how extremely good Martone is⁴. The cool thing about MacDonell though is that he’s a classic pest. Less the jerk variety and more the prizefighter. He mucks it up with the best of them, as a center no less, and Dallas doesn’t have that.

One Dallas prospect I haven’t talked about much is Cornell RHD George Fegaras. That’s my bad. Aram Minnetian and Tristan Bertucci really caught my eye this season. I’ve always liked one, and was critical of the other. The twain have met to positive results, so much so that I have Bertucci ranked ahead of Minnetian now. Dallas doesn’t have many right-handed defensive prospects, and haven’t had many for awhile. But Fegaras is really gaining on both, with potential to surpass them.

One extremely random note: it’s hard to clip Fegaras because Cornell’s camera work is so impossibly dreadful. Next season I’ll be keeping my eye on him with some film room. But man. I’ve been super impressed by his overall game. Unlike Minnetian and Bertucci, who are more polished skaters, Fegaras has more horsepower, with what looks like really good top speed. There’s very little to his game as something of a puck rusher that I can even criticize. His production has also leveled up, going from 7 points in 33 games to 13 in 24 — and that was despite starting the season late due to injury. He’s a plus athlete with maturity and room for development.

Updated Rankings

So: what does next season’s top 10 look like? Because I don’t count players 23 and over, there will only be seven worth noting⁵. And that list is as follows:

1. Tristan Bertucci

2. Emil Hemming

3. Aram Minnetian

4. George Fegaras

5. Angus MacDonell

6. Brad Gardiner

7. Matthew Seminoff

Bertucci takes the top spot. Before the injury, he was Barrie’s top defender alongside potential top 15 pick from this year, Kashawn Aitcheson. He did it all: he played on the top power play unit, on the penalty kill, and showed chops on both sides of the puck with beautiful, effortless skating. One’s of the few prospects Dallas that has with what you might call a blue-chip skill.

It was tough to drop Hemming, but with only one goal in his last seven games, he’s on pace to finish with 48 points through 61 games. As a sobering contrast, winger Nathan Behm from Kamloops, who is slated to be a late first rounder this year, has 63 points through 54 games. I don’t want to downplay Hemming’s transition to North American hockey. All of his previous time was spent in Finland. That undoubtedly factored into his lack of production. Read between the stats, and there’s still a lot to like. But for now, a player can’t get credit for ‘a difficult transition.’ Just saying.

While Dallas’ prospect pool is slim pickings, next season should still be fascinating. Can Hemming reach his full potential? How good are Dallas’ top three defensive prospects, who all look solid, with room to grow? We don’t get to use phrases like “the future is bright” anymore, but it’s all about the present for now anyway. Besides. Even cloudy days can be beautiful.

1. Addition by substraction. Just getting Logan Stanley far away from the roster would have sufficed.

2. I hate the term/phrase “IQ”. Got a problem? Then meet me in the octagon in the comments. (Hopefully this reads as the playful way I intended: the second part of course. Words mean things, and “IQ” means absolutely nothing of value.)

3. There is not NHLe article that isn’t technical. For those curious, Gabriel Desjardins developed one of the first, and Patrick Bacon has developed one of the latest.

4. Although if he gets picked over James Hagens, fire your scouts.

5. Ayrton Martino, Arno Tiefensee, Remi Poirier, Antonio Stranges, and Chase Wheatcroft would make the list if I didn’t have this rule. Again, I only do it to differentiate true prospects from prospects taking longer to develop — which is usually the sign of a prospect who won’t make it. Goaltenders being the exception.