Dallas Stars Draft Day Recap: A Little Bit of Everything, and Jim Nill Talks Tyler Seguin, Jason Robertson, and Radek Faksa
The offseason is not without its own drama
We’ll dig into every one of the five draft picks the Dallas Stars made today in just a moment, but first, let’s go over a couple of NHL updates after Jim Nill spoke with the media today.
You can watch the draft portion of Nill’s presser here, but I’ll summarize a couple points of interest, including a couple more notes about Jason Robertson.
First, Nill confirmed that the Stars did indeed discuss a trade of Jason Robertson to Seattle, as was reported by multiple outlets earlier this week.
“It’s no secret, everybody heard about the potential trade,” Nill said. “In the end, we gotta do our job. If there’s an opportunity that we think is a good opportunity for our team, we have to do it. It was also a good opportunity for him, and in the end, it didn’t materialize. I talked to his representatives right after that, and [we] continue to move forward.”
Nill declined to go into further detail about the exact process of the Robertson trade proposal with Seattle other than to say that it was “pretty straightforward.”
As you’d expect, Nill did a good job of answering further questions about Robertson without giving too much away, but emphasized that they would still prefer to keep Robertson, if possible.
“Our preference is to re-sign Jason Robertson,” Nill said. “Can we make it work? That’s what we have to figure out. But that’s our preference. It’s been our preference since day one. He’s a great player. He’s a good person. We drafted him. We developed him. It’s our preference to sign him, of course. Now, can we do that within the parameters of what we have to work with, and what he wants?”
The Stars’ salary cap situation is such that Robertson’s reported $14 million asking price is pretty much a non-starter for Dallas, particularly if the Stars want to have more depth than they did last year, when they finished the playoffs with essentially two fourth lines in the bottom-six forward group.
So it’s a challenge right now, to say the least.
“I fully understand their position,” Nill said of Robertson and his agent. “He’s a good player. With the way the game’s going, he’s earned his right to sign what he wants to sign for. We’ve got to run our business and put a team together, so we have to do our part. Can we find that common ground? That’s what we have to figure out.”
Nill also alluded to the recent shift in how NHL players are handling their contract negotiations, particularly with a salary cap that’s rising faster than ever.
“You guys have seen, there’s lots of talk out there,” Nill said. “The game…we’re on steroids a little bit right now, it seems like. Our game is just all of a sudden in the last two months, I don’t wanna say on a different level, but on a different path, a little bit. And maybe that’s our new game, and we have to adjust to it. The league is figuring it out. I think the players are figuring it out. We’ve just gotta walk through those different scenarios.”
Nill cautioned that while some details are bound to end up on social media, other rumors out in public have been inaccurate as well. But one thing that isn’t a rumor is that Mavrik Bourque and Jason Robertson both have a very real deadline approaching on June 29, when the Stars need to either sign or extend qualifying offers to both players—qualifying offers that would expose them to offer sheets from other teams.
When asked about Bourque in particular, Nill said they would certainly prefer to get things done sooner rather than later, if possible. But he also emphasized that the Stars aren’t exactly in uncharted territory, either.
“It’s funny,” Nill said, “As we go through this process, somebody said, ‘Remember six years ago when we went through this same thing?’ It’s just another experience. They’re not all the same, but we’ve been through it before.”
As for Bourque and Jamie Benn, Nill said they’re very much on his radar as well.
“We continue to talk to Mavrik,” Nill said. “I’m gonna talk to Jamie here now that we’ve gotten through the draft, and go from there.”
As for players that do have Dallas contracts, Nill confirmed that Radek Faksa did indeed end up needing a second surgical procedure on his injured foot.
“He had that procedure. It was successful,” Nill said of Faksa. “He’s in a cast now. Should be getting the cast off in a couple weeks,” Nill said. “They were actually surprised that he played. It needed to be done. I’m glad it’s okay. It’s all good.”
Nill confirmed Faksa is on track to be fully healed before training camp, but he then went on to mention another player still in the process of recovery. The Stars’ GM also said Tyler Seguin’s recovery from his ACL surgery continues, and they won’t be rushing anything.
“Tyler Seguin, he’s on his rehab part [of recovery]. Still got a ways to go. He’s still got a couple months [away], but he’s getting close,” Nill said. “Should be available for camp. What level? Those injuries, those are the ones that kinda, you feel good, but it doesn’t get up to speed. The body’s gotta get back up to speed. So he’ll be going through that process. We’ll have to watch him in camp, just be careful with him.”
Nill also mentioned that NHL training camps will be shorter this year with just four preseason games to be played, so they’re looking at alternate ways to get more game-like action for players that might need it.
Okay, enough of that. Let’s get into the very newest Dallas Stars.
The Stars Draft Picks
In 2026, Dallas had five picks, four of which were in the fifth round or later. It continues to be a thin draft pick cupboard for Dallas, so we’ll have to wait and see how they manage to continue filling the gaps.
This year, Dallas wound up taking two left-shot defensemen, two left-shot forwards, and a goalie that catches left-handed. But what are their names? Well, I’m glad you asked!
In the 2nd round, the Stars took Czechia native Jakub Vaněček (LHD) with the 59th overall pick. Vaněček played for the Tri-City Americans of the WHL last year.
Jim Nill said the Stars had Vaněček slotted as a late first-round pick on their board. Places like McKeen’s had Vaněček ranked similarly highly, while Elite Prospects had him at #67 overall. Nill acknowledged that opinions always begin varying more on players when you get into the late first round and beyond. Thus, most teams are going to have players that their board would say have “dropped” when you get into that area of the draft.
This was a neat feature on Vaněček from Worlds, by the way:
We talked about Vaněček a tiny bit earlier today, but the McKeen’s profile is a far more detailed one than I can give if you want to really dig into what he can do. Overall, Vaněček has the size, skating, and two-way ability to make him a perfectly solid pick in the late-second round from what I can put together, and the Stars said as much themselves.
“He was real good in the April tournament [U-18 World Championships],” said longtime Stars Director of Amateur Scouting Joe McDonnell. “We knew he was good prior to that, but we thought he took it to another level in April. Really like the skillset on him, and good size as well.”
McDonnell added that Vaněček showed more offense at Worlds than he had during the season, and the stats bear that out. He’s committed to play college hockey for Western Michigan starting in 2027 after (we presume) one more year in juniors.
As far as his fit down the road, I think it’s pretty much all upside. If Vaněček turns into a player, then you have a skilled defenseman in 3-4 years to help the organization with speed on the back end when NHL veterans like Lindell are approaching the end of their deals. I don’t really see much point trying to project players or rosters that far out in much detail, since things change so much over time, but for my money, it’s usually more prudent to take the best player available rather than try to draft for need, and McDonnell confirmed that the Stars did stick with the BPA approach this year.
In the 5th round, the Dallas Stars selected LW Ryan Brown from the London Knights (OHL). He’s 175-lbs, 5-foot-11, and Elite Prospects describes him as an Energy Guy, which you can see here:
McDonnell said that Brown played on OHL London’s first power play after being traded from Sarnia, and he showed he could play that role pretty well.
“He was excellent,” McDonnell said of Brown. “He’s got a bomb of a shot. Not the biggest guy, but he competes. He’s an offensive-style player.”
McDonnell also said the Stars do place a high value on drafting skill—as you’d expect most teams would.
“You always want skill,” McDonnell said. “If you just have big guys that just crash and bang type thing, I think they’re easier to find in trades. It’s hard to get skill. You’d like to develop your own players if you can, so if you can develop them with skill, that’s a big plus.”
(You can read a longer profile on Brown here if you want, rather than having me try to summarize it for you. There’s some intriguing upside there for a fifth-rounder, I’d say.)
In the 6th round, Dallas selected Danish goaltender Anton Emil Wilde Larsen. He is 6-foot-4, and he catches with his left hand, which you can watch him do in this video:
Taking one goaltender per year is not uncommon in the draft, and Dallas didn’t depart from that tradition today. Wilde-Larsen (I’ve seen it both hyphenated and not) didn’t have great numbers last year, but neither did anyone on his club team in Denmark.
Given that context, it might have been Wilde Larsen’s heroic work for Denmark at worlds that turned Dallas heads, more than anything else.
“He was great in the April tournament,” McDonnell said. “He was real good there. And he’s going to Sweden to play next year. So again, it’s a real good program from what the guys say, in Linköping, so it’s gonna be a good development path for him.”
Dallas’s first pick of the 7th Round was forward Jasper Kuhta, a left-shot, 6-foot-2 forward committed to the University of Massachusetts next year. Like Vaněček, McDonnell acknowledged that Kuhta’s performance with his national team was an impressive one. But in the late rounds of the draft, there are always caveats, and age is one in this case. Kuhta will be 20 years old in October, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing for Dallas’s purposes.
“He’s two years ahead of everybody else, so he’s a little more polished,” McDonnell said. “He’s just a little bit more advanced than your 17-year-old kids.”
McDonnell added that Kuhta’s strong performance at U-20’s for Finland was a strong positive for them in making the selection as well. As for his league play, Kuhta scored 32 goals in 61 games for Ottawa of the OHL last year, putting up a point-per-game—again, as a 19-year-old, which is important context in these things. Kuhta also played on the first power play for Finland, and he’s got a quality one-timer—which you can see here:
Dallas’s last pick of the draft was Mikhail Cherepanov, a 6-foot-1 left-shot defenseman who played in the NAHL last year.
Cherepanov is committed to play college hockey at Lake Superior State University in 2027-28, but that’s in two years. Cherepanov played in the NAHL this year, but next year, Joe McDonnell confirmed that Cherepanov will be going through the CHL Import Draft. That means they aren’t sure what team he’ll be playing for this season just yet.
“He looks like he’s a bit of a riverboat gambler, but he’s big. He can skate. We gotta get him into the CHL,” McDonnell said.
One of my favorite Cherepanov comments was from old DBD colleague, Derek Neumeier:
A few other notes from today:
Full development camp rosters will be released before Monday. I am pretty confident of this fact on account of development camp begins Monday morning.
One of my favorite bits of trivia is that the last Stars’ 7th-round draft pick to play in the NHL was Dylan Ferguson, drafted in 2017. But to be precise, my favorite part of this fact is that Ferguson played in the NHL that same year, when he got into a game for Vegas during their inaugural season as an emergency recall.
As for other seventh-round comparables, the Stars will probably be thrilled if they get a Jyrki Jokipakka-like career out of Cherepanov. Defensemen can always surprise you a bit.
New Assistant General Manager/Player Personnel Rich Peverley is in the process of moving to Dallas, Jim Nill said. Peverley’s promotion to AGM earlier this year means Peverley is now even more closely involved in the day-to-day of the organization, though Nill did say Pevereley is also still fulfilling some of his same duties in overseeing a lot of the Stars’ development.
One other thing McDonnell said today is that he personally misses the old, centralized NHL Draft.
“Yeah, I’m still not a big fan of it [the decentralized draft],” McDonnell said. “I like everybody together, having fun with it, and seeing all your guys that you see throughout the whole year, but it is what it is.”
(To be honest: I agree with him.)
Glad to hear the update of Radek. I really liked having him back this year.
Thanks for the drafted players recap. I look forward to seeing them next week at the dev camp.
Robert---I've heard that Seguin turned down the club's request to waive his no-trade clause. Is that in fact accurate? Second, do you get the sense that a bond has been broken between the Stars management team and Robertson, given Robo's (and his agent's) hard line stance? If Dallas offers the qualifying offer, are there any contending teams that actually have 4 1st round picks to trade? Finally, could Dallas free up enough cap space to pay Robo $13 million per year if they traded both Radek Faksa and Boosh for little to nothing, or would that still mean they could not sign Mavrik?