Dallas Stars Pick "Fastest Player in the Draft" Cameron Schmidt at 94th Overall

It's not often a third-round pick looks like this much of a steal right off the bat

Jun 28, 2025

I’m going to write more comprehensively tonight or tomorrow morning after the day is all wrapped up, but I think the Stars’ first pick of the 2025 draft deserves some immediate coverage, so here you go.

With the 94th pick of the draft, the Stars selected right wing Cameron Schmidt from the Vancouver Giants of the WHL.

Before we talk more about what sort of player Schmidt is, something you should know right away, just for context: Schmidt was projected to go much, much earlier in the draft.

That’s because Schmidt scored 40 goals in 61 games in the WHL this year, the same number as first-round pick Carter Bear, and one behind Gavin McKenna, who is projected to first overall in the 2026 NHL draft.

Last year, Schmidt also put up 31 goals for Vancouver, so it’s not like he’s just now figuring it out. The skill and scoring have always been there, and the skating is as good as it gets. Hence, why he was projected to be picked much earlier.

How much earlier? Well, as always, it depends on whom you ask. But Elite Prospects has this list that shows something of a consensus toward the end of the first round or beginning of the second.

Instead, the Stars got Schmidt near the end of the third round.

Naturally, you might ask: why did Schmidt fall so far? And that’s a question we can’t really answer without talking to the other 31 teams that passed on him.

Then again, this is the NHL, so there is one obvious detail you could start with: Schmidt stands 5-foot-7 right now, at 17 years old.

In other words, he’s a whole heck of lot like Logan Stankoven (who was drafted in the middle of the second round, if you recall).

Here are a couple quotes about Schmidt from NHL scouts, courtesy of his Elite Prospects rundown:

“He’s tricky. Tiny, doesn’t make a ton of plays, and that worries me. But he’s so quick and skilled and can score. I go back and forth—I have a hard time passing on him and I have a hard time picking him. He’s divisive even in my own mind.”
-NHL Scout, May 2025

“He’s having an impressive season. Speed is his best weapon. Really quick release. But the size is a lot to overcome.
Someone may take him in the first, but it won’t be us.”
-NHL Scout, February 2025

That’s probably about the size of it, right there. Schmidt’s size is an obvious facotr, but he also hasn’t been quite consistent enough in crunch time to convince teams that his elite skating and shooting can translate to bigger stages, particularly with an obvious limitation accompanying his game.

This was particuarly true at the U-18 World Championships in Frisco a couple months ago, where he struggled to finish some great looks for Team Canada despite making some great plays. He wound up with just two goals and two assists in seven games, which was disappointing by his standards.

Here’s one Elite Prospects cout on Schmidt’s performance in the championship game against Sweden:

Schmidt put together a more engaged game. He started it off by burning a defender on the forecheck -- an uber-physical effort. There were flashes of his game that he pushes with the Giants -- rolling high, cutting inside, tapping off pucks after pulling defenders inward.
He had a few notable attacks in transition, where he can leverage his skill set […]

Schmidt’s hands are special, though […]

He’s also brilliant when he has to improvise -- a lot of route- faking and cutting to disrupt gaps. He will actively fake and pump to the outside. There were opportunities to work harder and play a more robust game, though. He was a non-value player defensively. He can be special, but obviously, there are size and projection caveats here. Maybe a fringe-A, high-B grade for our board.
-Elite Prospects

And here’s another excerpt from his EP profile:

For a time this season, we considered that Schmidt could have similar potential to Cole Caufield and Alex Debrincat and become a top goalscoring threat in the NHL. This future is still fully within his grasp, provided he makes a few changes to his game.
It all comes down to consistency.
We’ve seen the high-end playmaking flashes, the elite shot and speed, and physicality. Now, Schmidt has to start delivering that package of abilities every game, becoming a top-end play-driver and a triple-threat, high-upside forward.
At the draft, as teams start running through their picks, Schmidt will rapidly become one of the highest-upside players available. If he makes the necessary changes to his game, he could become one of those day-two draft steals who changes the course of an organization.
-Elite Prospects

I watched a couple of Canada’s games at U-18s, but I am no NHL scout, and my notes on Schmidt are slim, other than a couple of “wow” moments (literally, that’s what I wrote) that didn’t turn into goals, as mentioned in the above profiles.

Elite Prospects also has a great rundown by David St-Louis on Schmidt’s realistic chances of making the NHL, which you should read. A bit from that piece:

One glance at Cameron Schmidt’s Elite Prospects page is all one needs to understand that the 5-foot-7 winger’s odds of becoming an NHLer are slimmer than most. This season, 920 players stepped onto NHL ice for a shift. Thirteen of them were 5-foot-8 or shorter — and only about half of those could be considered regulars.
Cam Schmidt could very well be the smallest player in the league when he joins his NHL team, especially considering the league’s average height has been creeping upward […]

Schmidt is not just WHL fast — he’s NHL fast. Give him a runway and he would already blow past most players in the league.
Most of his transition ability comes from his ability to outpace the opposition, but in his best games, he layered some tricks on top of his speed, transforming into a puck-carrying machine for the Vancouver Giants.

-David St-Louis

It’s no surprise at all that the Stars took a player with an obvious mitigating factor to his upside with their first pick of the draft—any player in the third round is going to have some perceived limitations. But it’s even less surprising that the Stars took a player in the mold of one of their biggest prospect success stories of recent years: Logan Stankoven. Because if any team knows about smaller players defying the odds to terrorize the NHL, it’s the Stars.

Schmidt isn’t Stankoven, despite the obvious comparisons. His skating might be even better, for one. But the things he’ll have to prove are very similar to what Stankoven did, for all that. Only time will tell if Dallas’s development history continues its recent run of churning out NHL players from undersized frames. But they have one heck of a starting point, as of today.

If you’d like to get a better feel for what Schmidt brings as a player, check out this highlight reel below. It features not only some of his 40 goals from this past WHL season, but also some of his great setup and playmaking work, too.

Nothing in the draft is ever for certain, and that goes treble for picks made after the first round. But given how strapped the Stars were for high picks coming into the day, getting a high-upside player like Schmidt already makes the day feel like a pretty good one for them.