The Other Stars: Emil Hemming's point streak ends, Ayrton Martino's begins
Plus the usual Dallas Stars prospect report.
As Dallas gets closer to the trade deadline, and without a first round pick to deal, it’s worth wondering: might anyone in the Stars’ current top 10 be up for sale?
Vegas has been the model for wining some, and losing some when it comes to trading prospects. They’d probably rather have Nick Suzuki right now then the years they got out of Max Pacioretty since he wasn’t brought back before their Cup win, but it’s nicely offset by trading Erik Brannstrom (plus change) for Mark Stone. Whatever you think of hindsight, Vegas sold high on who they drafted, and ended up winners in the long run without those prospects.
I don’t believe Jim Nill has this kind of move in him. He has yet to trade a top prospect within the system who hasn’t already received a shot in the NHL. Reilly Smith was more akin to Cody Glass if we’re sticking with these Vegas comparisons. With 40 games to go off of, it wasn’t clear what Smith’s ceiling was despite a disappointing early run1. But it was certainly enough to help bring back an elite player whose sin was not being able to change his spots, whatever the hell that means. Nick Paul in the Jason Spezza trade is as close as it gets, and even then — nobody thought Paul would be as good as he turned out.
I don’t expect Nill to change, either. But with Lian Bichsel in the big leagues, Dallas has arguably the worst prospect pool in the league. The only two teams of comparable weakness is Florida and Boston. While Hemming is probably a better prospect than Justin Sourdif, the Panthers have better depth. The Bruins don’t have depth, but they have Matt Poitras and Fabian Lysell. What I’m slowly getting at is that whether at the deadline, or in the summer, clean house if it means making your NHL team better; if it means moving out cap to stave off the dreaded offer sheet; if it means rolling the dice on a veteran value-add, etc. Just saying.
But that’s just my personal opinion. And I know you’re not here for that. You’re here for a prospect report of your favorite team. Apologies if I did the opposite of selling you on why you should upgrade to paid in order to continue reading about this “awful” prospect pool.
Instead of going down the list one by one, I’m gonna write a rundown of each league containing ranked Stars prospects according to the league’s NHLe rank in descending order. This feels a little cleaner since it also gives fans who don’t follow prospects a better sense of who is performing relative to league difficulty.
AHL
DEL
NCAA
OHL
WHL
I didn’t number these because that would make things confusing. The top leagues beyond the NHL are the KHL, Czech Professional League, SHL, NLA, and Liiga — in that order (in strictly statistical terms).