Stars’ pipeline is weak, but there’s no reason to panic

The Dallas Stars are among the ranks of the NHL’s top teams as a year-in, year-out contender for the Stanley Cup that has yet to break out of the Western Conference Final with the current iteration of its core.

After three straight years of falling in the conference final, the Stars had a disappointing outcome last season after a 112-point regular season gave way to a first-round exit at the hands of the Minnesota Wild in a showdown between two of the West’s top teams brought about by the league’s divisional playoff format.

Now, a roster up against the salary cap but led by elite talent with the likes of Mikko Rantanen, Miro Heiskanen, Wyatt Johnston, Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz and Thomas Harley is in need of an influx of young, cost-controlled reinforcements in the form of graduating prospects.

But general manager Jim Nill and his scouts have made just one first-round pick since the 2023 draft as they’ve aggressively shelled out draft capital to add current talent to the roster.

On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by Daily Faceoff prospect analyst Steven Ellis to discuss why the current state of Dallas’ prospect pool may not be as poor as it seems on the surface.

Carter Hutton: Now for the Dallas Stars, Jim Nill has built a team that’s been a contender for many, many years. But right now you have them ranked 32nd in the prospect pool. What’s your take on Dallas, and where do they go from here?

Steven Ellis: This is a team that’s focused on winning now, right? So it doesn’t really matter what their pipeline is. There was one point where they were kind of in that mid-pack, even maybe closer 20th, where you still looked at them and said, ‘You know, there’s still a lot of guys to like.’ I think when your best prospect is Emil Hemming, and he’s maybe a third line winger, that’s not really what you’re hoping for, but again this is a team that’s not drafting high. They’re not picking in the top five. Cameron Schmidt’s a lot of fun, absolutely dominant in the CHL the last couple years, but he’s not guaranteed to make Canada’s World Junior team this year despite being a guy who can put up 100 points in the WHL. Jakub Vanecek might be more of a third-pairing defenseman, and then beyond that, I’m not really convinced any of their other prospects come close to tasting full-time NHL duty. So yeah, this is something where I think for Dallas, this is kind of just what you would expect from a competitive team. You look at other teams that are near the bottom of the rankings, and it’s teams that are typically pretty competitive. The Florida Panthers, for example, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Edmonton Oilers. So it kind of makes sense where they are, but at the same time, if you can get three guys out of this top 10 who become NHL players, you’re probably happy.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…