Traverse City: The Dallas Stars Blueline Needs Help. Wyatt Johnston and Logan Stankoven Do Not.
A tweetdown on a night the Dallas Stars prospects will want to forget.
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Alas, hockey is back! Thursday night, the Traverse City Prospect Tournament Began with a bang, and the kind of out-of-pocket glitches you get from badly produced video games. You see, the NHL has this problem: marketing their own product is really tough. The Dallas Stars vs. the Toronto Maple Leafs…or was it the Columbus Blue Jackets vs. the St. Louis Blues? You wouldn’t have known from the live telecast. The less said about the delays, lack of footage, a countdown board during a period of live hockey, and absence of audio…the better.
Like most, I had high hopes for Dallas. The Stars had their three best forward prospects and Toronto had just one. Missing from their roster was Matthew Knies, Topi Niemela, Rodion Amirov (recovering from a brain tumor, thankfully), Roni Hirvonen, and Veeti Miettinen. Turns out, they have a pretty good AHL squad, which I 100% underestimated.
Wyatt Johnston started the game off - and you’ll be hearing this a lot - with a takeaway and ultimately the setup to give DAL the 1-0 lead from a slick little backhand from Matej Blumel. If DAL didn’t have so many blue chip forward prospects, there would be room for the proverbial dark horse. There isn’t, so I hesitate to call Blumel a darkhorse, but he profiled like an excellent transition forward in the Czech league, and some of that was evident last night. He develops speed quickly in single lanes, and has a deceptive shot. Obviously the NHL doesn’t take its future talent seriously so we didn’t actually see the entire play but we got the cliffs notes.
The real story of the first period was Johnston. Johnston, Johnston, Johnston. Every time I try tempering my expectations, he shows out, each and every shift. I’ve been watching hockey for a long time. Well over 20 years. And I can honestly say - with a little bit of victory green bias, granted - I’ve never seen a forward run as clean a route as Johnston. Not a single movement, on and off the puck, ever looks wasted and the puck just swiftly moves from zone to zone like clockwork with him on the ice. Players who don’t necessarily have standout talents, but who have standout processing power are hard to gauge in terms of upside but Wyatt seems to display endless upside.
Case in point: his play to spring Logan Stankoven for the second goal.
One way to think about a good play is to imagine what a bad (or suboptimal) one would have looked like. Example: it’s easy to see how a bottom six forward would have stayed on the inside, playing it safe, staying man on man. Think of how many players would just mirror their opponent; of how many players who are keeping Robertson in the zone by safely playing the body and not even thinking about taking the play outside the zone.
Instead…Johnston starts with a pokecheck. Kind of like throwing a jab in boxing; it’s not a punch that can hurt, but it can setup the punches that DO. By starting with the pokecheck, Johnston leaves himself room to respond to Robertson’s next move. Robertson predictably cuts back to counter the pokecheck, except now Johnston has body position on him. Don’t dismiss the pushoff either. That little push forces Robertson to take longer re-positioning himself, which allows Johnston to beat him cleanly for the eventual dish to a breaking Stankoven. It’s this constant economy of motion that makes me think Johnston has it in him to be the next captain.
As for Stankoven, I thought he was noticeable all night as well, even when he got shifted away from Johnston in the third. I’ll talk about Stankoven more in depth for next Wednesday’s D Magazine piece, but he’s another player who seems to thrive on the momentum of the game. I don’t know if you call that a ‘skill’ per se, but Stankoven is gonna be a fan favorite: he’s a bundle of violent joy who knows how to set the tone (led the WHL in first goals scored), and keep the engine running.
Unfortunately that’s where the good news stops. The rest of the night was like this.
A lot of credit goes to Toronto, and I think this needs emphasizing. The line of Nick Abruzzese, Curtis Douglas (Stars fans should remember him), and Semyon Der-Arguchintsi brutalized Dallas’ blueline, forcing them to make suboptimal reads pretty much all night. Artem Grushnikov was the only blueliner who seemed completely in his comfort zone. I didn’t like his puck handling on the blueline, but I really appreciated his overall movement across all three zones. He moved well to set up his own shots in the offensive zone, he played the neutral aggressively, and he rarely lost his assignment against a Leafs squad that ran game on everyone else. The fact that I can’t remember him getting beat cleanly more than once is a massive achievement.
The pairing of Jacob Holmes and Dawson Barteaux in particular was brutal. They constantly got beat on the outside, never seemed to identity the trailers, and outright folded under the pressure of the forecheck like human lawnchairs. I don’t mean to be tough on them, so keep in mind these are judgments of their play within the game - not an assessment of their future roles. But they need to just…not play together.
I want to talk about Mavrik Bourque because I think he might low-key be the player with the highest ceiling. The EPRinkside group (who all do absolutely subline scouting work) agrees, ranking Bourque 31st out of their top 100 (they’ve got Johnston and Stankoven at #50 and #44, respectively).
He was noticeable on this chance that Seth Petruzelli stonewalled but I think Bourque was more noticeable on this play for the wrong reason: right before this he had a better chance on the same spot but elected to pass it back to the point. Bourque is the kind of player I think has a higher upside in terms of raw mechanics, but who is gonna need someone in DAL’ development division paying close attention to the players they surround him with. Give him wingers who can keep up with his high-brow thinking, and he’ll be an olive tree of chance creation with his passing, shooting, and transitioning. Don’t, and you’re just throwing him a barbell while drowning. You wouldn’t notice any of this at even strength because Antonio Stranges and Riley Damiani were doing their own thing.
Bourque is a distribution wizard, and Stranges seemed to be trying too hard to freelance his own opportunities while Damiani just looked outright lost in space (he hasn’t played much hockey unlike the others so again - these aren’t judgments). The fact that they didn’t have a blueline who could exit the zone really put the pressure on Bourque to stay on the defensive (which’s he actually quite good at).
Apropos of nothing: remember that save.
This is why I can’t be too hard on Bourque. Without Johnston and Stankoven, Dallas couldn’t get anything going. It wasn’t all bad. Gavin White had some strong plays blazing through the neutral zone and Christian Kyrou flashed some of his potential. But it was almost all bad.
This just seemed to be the story of the night: a lack of clean exits leading to miscommunication leading to Matt Murray getting dusted. (I don’t think Murray had a bad game given the chances he was seeing but it also wasn’t a great game either.)
What’s the verdict? It’s just one game, so nothing really. I didn’t notice anyone in the bottom seven (and I was definitely looking, as I feel Connor Roulette has some potential). But the good news is that Johnston looks like a center gunning for Roope Hintz’ job. Dallas only needs one of these guys to elevate their forward group at the NHL level, and at least one of them looks ready.
The bad news is that aside from Lian Bichsel, who I think is quite good, the blueline is largely the blueline of the future. Dallas gets a lot of credit for their recent drafts, but their blueline cupboard is all but empty. You could argue it would have been nice to see someone like Jack Bar, or Samuel Sjolund, who are higher rated defensive prospects than most of what Dallas had on ice, but we’re not talking about Thomas Harley-like talents here. My hope is that Dallas’ takeaway is not to wait until the draft to take the player they need, but to start poaching talent from other teams the way Jim Nill did to Chicago when he got Stephen Johns for basically nothing. Or hell - go all in on the Jakob Chychrun sweepstakes! Normally this would just be a pipeline problem. But that’s the thing: we’re talking about Dallas’ future, and their present already mirrors the same problem. Let’s hope they don’t wait to fix the defense like they did the offense.
Excellent work, David, thank you!
I haven't heard anywhere who's coaching the kids up there? Surely it's not PDB and co., but I'd suspect whoever it is would want to at least employ a similar style? Any insights on systems or style they leaned toward? (I know it was only 1 tourny game, lol)
Thanks again, David