More Coaching Staff Clarity and Draft Day Decisions

The Dallas Stars are still Quite Interesting

Dallas got a high-upside pick in the third round with Cameron Schmidt, as you already heard. While Schmidt is 5-foot-7, he’s lightning quick, and he’s also scored a ton in the WHL.

Dallas drafted five more players after Schmidt, but at the end of the day, a draft is defined by its best finds, and Schmidt has every chance to be that. The Stars’ director of amateur scouting Joe McDonnell saw it that way, too.

“We think we got first-round talent with him, so we were excited. We wish he was bigger, but we sort of see a Logan Stankoven kind of guy,” McDonnell said. “You need skill, and this kid has oodles of it, so we were happy.”

McDonnell also said the Stars weren’t drafting for any particular need, which allowed some scouts to “bang the table” for their preferred prospects, like Stars scout Shane Turner did for sixth-round pick Dawson Sharkey (whom McDonnell gave a rather, ah, colorful description of).

McDonnell also said that he noticed a trend in what types of players were targeted this year.

“A lot of big defensemen [taken] early on, for sure,” McDonnell said. “So it was interesting in that point. We didn’t get any.”

The last sentence was said with a wry chuckle, as the Stars drafted no defensemen at all with the six picks they did have in rounds 3-7. In fact, big defensemen were a trend throughout the draft, as not a single blueliner under six feet tall was drafted by any NHL team through all seven rounds.

One such player was traded on Saturday, howeer, as the Los Angeles Kings sent Jordan Spence to Ottawa for a couple of later draft picks. In a vacuum, it was a sort of Nils Lundkvist deal with a lower price, and Spence looks every bit like a good young defenseman. But in the context of the NHL these days, smaller defensemen aren’t really a coveted asset, and Saturday reinforced that.

As for Lundkvist, I find it amusing that he and Spence were once both listed as 5-foot-11, whereas Lundkvist is now listed at 6-foot-1 on the Stars’ website. Height and weight are very amorphous attributes in the NHL, apparently, even when both players are 24 years old, or when both of them have played 180+ NHL games (180 for Spence, 183 for Lundkvist).

As for the players who have yet to make the NHL, it will be interesting to see how many of Saturday’s draftees can turn into great stories. For now, all they can do is work hard, attend development camp next week (which will be open to the public), and wait and see.

(As an aside, I have some family obligations to attend to at the start of camp, but please feel free to say hi if you’re around the rink later in the week.)

---

When Cameron Schmidt was drafted today, I couldn’t help but think of two other players (besides Logan Stankoven) in Stars draft history.

The first player is Jason Robertson, who also fell a bit down the board when the Stars got him at 39th overall in 2017, taking him despite a lot of teams passing on the slow-skating Robertson, who was ranked as high as 14th by some scouting outfits at the time.

However, the Stars felt pretty confident about taking a risk at the time, given that they had already picked up Jake Oettinger and Miro Heiskanen in the first round. So they took a gamble on Robertson’s skill, and it has paid off more than anyone would have ever predicted, with Robertson putting up a record-setting 109-point season in the NHL just six years after being drafted.

Schmidt isn’t Robertson, for many reasons. Players who score like Robertson had (42 goals in the OHL that season) don’t fall to 94th in the draft just because they’re slow, and Robertson even back then had a lot more size than people tend to give him credit for.

Having that foundation along with his scoring made Robertson a good value pick in the second round, even if there were questions. But when the Stars have gambled on skill, it’s tended to pay off, and Robertson has thus far shown that he, like Jamie Benn, is not going to let slower skating prevent him from embarrassing NHL goalies.

The second player I thought of was Alex DeBrincat, who was also taken 39th overall, like Robertson.

DeBrincat, in his draft year, was listed at 5-foot-7, 160lbs. He’s now at 5-foot-8, 180lbs if you believe the NHL website.

He was also commonly ranked as a first-round pick even before the start of a season where he would score 51 goals in 60 games (on Connor McDavid and Remi Elie’s stacked Erie Otters team), only to slide into the second round of the draft.

The Stars picked 25th overall that year after finishing atop the Western Conference in the season prior, and they had a few solid names to choose from, including DeBrincat.

Remember, this was the year after they had taken Val Nichushkin, Julius Honka, and Denis Gurianov (and Roope Hintz) in successive drafts. Dallas had made bold draft picks under Jim Nill, and they had the opportunity to do so again.

Instead, they took the 6-foot-5 Riley Tufte out of the USHL (which was a bit of a risk itself, given how the USHL was perceived at the time). Still, Tufte was pretty frequently ranked in that 20-30 range by draft folks that year (though not the prescient Scott Wheeler). In all, the Tufte pick was still far less of a reach than the Gurianov pick the year prior.

It didn’t work out, of course. Tufte has gotten NHL games with Dallas, Colorado, and Boston, but nothing of real consequence as he approaches his late twenties. Meanwhile, DeBrincat has earned over $40 million in his career, scoring buckets of goals every year, including 39 for Detroit in 2024-25.

Now, of course, it’s easy to look down the board at all the players Dallas passed on, including DeBrincat, and scoff at their choice. But that’s not what I’m here to do. I don’t think it’s fair to judge them for not magically deducing that Jordan Kyrou or even Sam Steel were better value picks at 25, even if some pundits had other players ranked much higher at the time. The draft is not an exact science.

More importantly, Dallas learned lessons from their mistakes, and they haven’t carried those scars with them in ways that have led to repeated missteps in the more predictable rounds of the draft.

You don’t have to like every pick Dallas has made under Nill, but it’s clear they’ve been willing to draft both large (Bichsel, Tufte, Harley, Nichushkin) and small (Stankoven, Bourque, Honka, Johnston) when it comes to picks early in the draft.

This year, with only a late third rounder to use, the Stars shot their shot, and took a player with some pretty clear similarities to DeBrincat in Cameron Schmidt.

Like most third-round picks, this one is also a bet against the odds. Making the NHL is extremely difficult, and even moreso for players on the smaller side like Schmidt. But the Stars thought it was worth the risk, and now it’s up to the player and the Stars’ development team to take those next steps.

It’s just way more fun when a team swings big, even if they miss sometimes. And this was a great time for just such a swing.

Coaching Staff Updates

Jim Nill also spoke on Saturday after the draft, and he was able to clarify a couple of things about the Stars’ coaching search.

First, Nill elaborated on Misha Donskov’s leaving the team to join Hockey Canada as a vice president and national men’s team coach. Nill confirmed that Hockey Canada reached out to Nill, who is also a part of Team Canada as we saw at the Four Nations Faceoff, and he then relayed the opportunity to Donskov.

“It’s an opportunity that’s hard to say “no” to,” Nill said. “I said, ‘Misha, I don’t want to lose you, but what an opportunity.’”

In the end, Donskov took the role, and it’s hard to blame him. The Stars have long had a standing policy that employees are free to leave for a better opportunity, and Donskov got something akin to a once-in-a-lifetime offer.

“That’s how we kind of operate here,” Nill said. “If there’s an opportunity for someone, I don’t want to hold them back.”

---

That adds a second assistant coach opening to the one previously left by Steve Spott, who left to join the Boston Bruins.

As for Spott, Nill said that after they decided to move on from Pete DeBoer, the reality was that whatever head coach they ended up replacing him with would have some say about who was on their assistant coaching staff.

“We started looking at situations, who we were gonna hire and stuff,” Nill said. “And whoever we were gonna bring in needs to have a little say to what they can do. And there was a market out there for coaches.”

If I’m reading between the lines correctly, this was the Stars’ way of telling Spott that his job wasn’t secure for next year. He might even have had to interview for his own job with whoever the next head coach turned out to be.

“So I sat down with Steve and said, ‘Steve, look, there’s a market here.’ And I wanted to give him that opportunity to talk to those teams, too,” Nill said. “I didn’t want him to get stuck in a situation where, ‘Boy, maybe I gotta make a change here,’ and the market was dried up. So it worked out well for him, too.”

According to Spott, this conversation was the Stars’ way of telling Spott they were going in a different direction. So regardless of exactly what was explictly said, it sounds like the message was delivered loud and clear, and Spott was able to land on his feet in Boston.

DeBoer, of course, was less fortunate, as just about all the vacant head coaching positions in the NHL were filled by the time the Stars moved on from him. But he’ll also continue to be paid millions of dollars next year by Dallas until he’s hired by another team, so I suppose it didn’t work out too badly for him, either.

---

As for Alain Nasreddine, Nill confirmed that situation was a little bit different than Spott’s. When asked if Nasreddine was be returning, Nill said this.

“Yes. Yes, he’s part of our search. I’ve interviewed Alain, just so everyone knows,” Nill said. “He’s been part of our search, and deservingly so.”

Now, should Nasreddine not end up getting the head coach position, you might wonder whether he would find himself in a similar situation as Spott, with a new coach coming in and the market much closer to being “dried up,” as Nill put it. But as of right now, it sure sounds like Nill is planning on Nasreddine to be back next season either way.

And really, the Stars would be lucky to have him, given the success he’s had working with their penalty kill.

---

As for the timing of the coaching hire itself, Nill echoed what he said Friday night: the timeline is less important than making sure they make the right decision. When asked if it was important to have a coach in place before July 1st, Nill said not necessarily.

“Yeah, I’m less worried about the player side of it,” Nill said. “I just want to make sure I get the right coach in the right situation.”

Sean Shapiro confirmed on Saturday that Glen Gulutzan and Neil Graham have both interviewed for the head coaching vacancy, with Gulutzan having done so in person, presumably after the end of the Stanley Cup Final.

“I want to make sure I do that right,” Nill said, “and I want to make sure we do July 1st right, too.”

I’m still genuinely unsure what direction the Stars are leaning in when it comes down to whom to hire. It’s such a fascinating decision—as it was to move on from DeBoer to begin with—and anyone they hire is immediately going to feel the burden of high expectations, given where this team has been in recent years.

Neil Graham is very highly regarded in the Stars’ organization, but if Nill handles this hire like he does other big decisions, he’s surely heard lots of people “bang the table” for different candidates out there, just as they were doing earlier on Saturday at the draft table (in Frisco).

And then, in the end, he has to make a choice.

The team is too good for a major step back to feel like anything but failure, but change is always challenging, and it would be even moreso if the candidate they bring in is a rookie NHL coach like Neil Graham.

In some ways, I wonder if being a midseason hire might be easier on a younger coach. Sure, you don’t have the benefit of time and preparation afforded by the summer and training camp, but you also have a boatload of excuses to point to if you can’t turn the season around. You’re allowed to figure out things as you go, to an extent.

Recall Rick Bowness taking over back in Decmber of 2019. It was such an upheaval that it was hard to know what to expect of the team, and in some ways, that might have made it easier to forgive them if the losing streak they were on (up until the world stopped) had sunk their season.

Instead, Bowness’s team got a couple of months to regroup, and they ended up making the team’s deepest playoff run in 20 years.

Whoever Nill hires this time, though, won’t have a chance to take much of a breath. Expectations are high, and the outcomes will need to reflect that. I’m told it’s a results-based business, after all.