The Other Stars: How Cedar Park can (maybe) impact Dallas' success
Not a lot of talent. But a lot of x-factors.
Training camp for the Texas Stars is already underway. Next Friday, they begin their season against the Henderson Silver Knights, Vegas’ AHL affiliate. For the most part, it’ll be tough to project real success from the baby Stars. Even with Logan Stankoven and Mavrik Bourque taking over the league, they struggled late in the 2023-2024 season, tallying only three wins at one point in the entire month of January. They backed into the playoffs, but proved worthy by beating Manitoba, and then taking the Milwaukee Admirals the distance in a losing effort.1
Without Stankoven and Bourque, the Souther(er) Stars are supposed to struggle. But I’m not sure. Nobody can replace them, but the Texas Stars made a lot of moves to ensure another run into the Calder Cup playoffs. While they lost two burgeoning stars, they gained a lot of quality veterans.
As of this writing, Matěj Blümel, Kole Lind, Oskar Bäck, Arttu Hyry, Cameron Hughes, Emilio Pettersen, Alex Petrovic, Kyle Capobiacno, and Lian Bichsel remain in Dallas. Likely only only one of those names gets to stay in Dallas; in this case, whoever gets picked as the 13th forward.2
Robert wrote eloquently about Dallas’ depth in D Magazine. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it, because I always recommend Robert’s writing. But also, I want today to be the in-the-weeds version of that and focus on the Texas Stars in particular, and how their potential could play a factor in Dallas’ success.
It’s worth clarifying that last statement. I’m not singling out players who I think can make the eventual cut. Nor am I saying that these will be impact players in time. Most of these players are older to begin with. As far as I’m concerned, these are all career AHLers unless Bichsel and Hyry go back to the AHL. If that seems insulting, it shouldn’t be.
An AHLer giving you NHL shifts is not a recipe for disaster. A lot of players have given Dallas quality shifts with their fleeting time: Curtis McKenzie, Joel Hanley, Gavin Bayreuther, Taylor Fedun, Rhett Gardner, et cetera. In many ways, I see their time with Dallas as no different than a veteran stopgap’s tenure. McKenzie wasn’t better than Blake Comeau, but they both gave yeoman shifts to their NHL squads, never less, and never more. Hanley wasn’t better than Greg Pateryn—wait, yes, he was! Nevermind. Anyway, you get the point.
So who’s the next crop of replacements, and what can we expect?
(So as not to leave unpaid subscribers empty-handed, here’s a fun video with AHL veteran, Max Fortunas.)