The Other Stars: Mini mixtapes for Antonio Stranges and Emil Hemming, and an complete update of Dallas' top 10 prospects

Plus notes on Dallas' loss to Anaheim.

Let’s start with Dallas’ loss to Anaheim.

Trap games are real, but not as real as Lukas Dostal’s ability to steal a game. As of this writing, he leads the league in goals saved above expected. The Stars didn’t play a perfect game. In fact, Anaheim dominated the first period, nearly destroying all the good will Dallas earned up to that point. But as the game unfolded, and once Pete DeBoer hit warp speed on the blender, the superior team looked like the superior team.

I’m not gonna do this “take away DeSmith’s soft goals” parallel universe stuff. Yes, it matters as a piece of analysis if we’re talking about the intrinsic values of both teams. But it’s not that interesting as a postgame recap. Which is why I’ll likely save specific postgame analysis from here on out for the playoffs. There’s not a lot worth unpacking right now. The better team doesn’t always win, and even though Anaheim deserves respect as a plucky underdog, their underlying numbers are awful, they’re nursing a ton of injuries, and Dallas could have been better. Doesn’t that pretty much cover it?

Quick note: if you’re the podcast kind of person, listen to Gavin Spittle and I have something of a doomcast.

Good! Frankly, it was fun watching Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Pavel Mintyukov, and Olen Zellweger. I liked their draft (sort of) this year, so give them two years, and it’ll be interesting to see where they’re out. Any Dallas versions of Carlsson, Gauthier, or Mintyukov? Unfortunately no, not even close. But there’s still plenty of interesting players on the Stars end. Below are the updated rankings, with little arrows that indicate whether the player is trending up or down, with gradations indication whether these are hard versus soft trends.

What follows will be a blurb about each player on this list explaining the trend, and for some, clips of the players themselves. Or like today (thanks mostly to Antonio Stranges) — an entire mini mixtape! Keep in mind, these rankings are not fixed. Players move in and out of the rankings all the time. It’ll take more than a few weekends for some of these players to drop out of the rankings altogether, but that’s what these weekly reports are for: seeing who’s hot, who’s not.

As usual, consider becoming a paid subscriber if you’re not, and if not, I get it: it’s nothing personal. It’s just business. Now…onto business.