The Other Stars: Emil Hemming and Tristan Bertucci are doing the best they can for the Barrie Colts in these OHL playoffs

Film room on two Dallas prospects making some serious noise at a critical time.

I’m sorry. Just don’t listen to anything I say. “No more prospect reports as we gear up for the Stanley Cup—” I lied to you and I’m sorry. Let’s just leave it at that.

Honestly, I didn’t expect there to be much to talk about. The Texas Stars don’t start their Calder run until May 9. The awesome college prospects under Dallas’ system like Aram Minnetian, George Fegaras, and Ayrton Martino are more or less out (Martino struggled with the AHL pace a bit, and so has been demoted to healthy scratch status¹). WHL defender Niilopekka Muhonen has been fine for the Medicine Hat Tigers, but let’s face it — even with Muhonen being a long shot Stars prospect, we’d all rather be watching Gavin McKenna. Plus nobody’s gonna read a report on Muhonen.

That left the Barrie Colts. The Colts are stacked with legit B, if not A-tier prospects between Emil Hemming, Tristan Bertucci — who Dallas Stars skating coach Luke Chilcott raved about — and well, Brad Gardiner (not a serious projectable player but still). However, the Colts have been a head scratcher all season. They’re a low-scoring team, aren’t particularly fun to watch due to Marty Williamson’s hyper-conservative system, and they aren’t even fueled by any star power from this year’s 2025 draft beyond LHD Kashawn Aitcheson, who is projected to go into the top 10-15, which I just don’t understand at all². Even the premier talent they mined from the 2024 draft is anything but dynamic, between Cole Beaudoin and Riley Pattersson.

In other words, all the ingredients were there — I thought — for me to pay less attention. After all, what’s the big deal if Barrie’s not really a good team, and they’re liable to get ousted right out the gate? Well it’s good to be wrong. Right now Barrie is the second-highest scoring team in the OHL playoffs thanks to a scorching hot power play (37 percent conversion rate as of this writing). It was enough to carry them past the Niagara Ice Dogs in five, and the Kingston Frontenacs in seven. Obviously, this is classic PDO merchantism. Barrie will fall back down to earth. And they are, as they’re currently down 0-2 to Bennett Sennecke, Ben Danford, and Calum Ritchie of the Oshawa Generals in the Conference Championships.

But while Barrie is struggling right now, Hemming and Bertucci are not. In fact, they’ve been fantastic. Both are point per game players right now with 30 between the two of them. How are they doing it, and is it possible we haven’t seen the last of the victory green graduations? I’ll start talking more about their playoff performances as a whole next season, but today we’re gonna be in the film room looking at their two games versus Oshawa, and how they’re reflections of what they’ve been doing despite everything else around them crumbling.