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Dallas Stars Daily Links: How The Stars Scout The Draft

Posted on by Kathleen Tibbetts

Check your pulse and make all your bets: The 2019 NHL Entry Draft is just over a week away. Will the Dallas Stars get an impact player in the first round? Will they keep working fifth-round magic? Will you still be speaking with them afterward?

To figure it out, Sean Shapiro sat down with Stars director of amateur scouting Joe McDonnell – who called in the interview from a grocery-store parking lot in Northern Ontario, which was the only place he could get cell signal.

Scouts do a lot of traveling, and they watch a lot of hockey. McDonnell discussed the challenges of keeping up with the approximately 150 players they scout every draft year:

…Take [Connor McMichael (with the London Knights)]. Probably going to go in the first-round somewhere, but he was put into a third, fourth-line role once Alex Formenton and Liam Foudy came back. But before they were there and they left for World Junior, he was in a first-line role and he was outstanding. So now he moves back into a third-line role and you are trying to gauge, was that just a one-week wonder-type thing? Is he really that good? It’s exciting, absolutely, to see these kids that you watch and what you feel about them and see where they pan out. But that’s our job, you are trying to project what they are going to be in five, 10 years from the time you are looking at them.

How often do the Stars go off the board? When it comes to their own board, not so much:

We’re always picking from our rank board, but once you get into the sixth or seventh round, it’ll be players that say only [Director of European Scouting] Karri Takko has seen or our Russian scout has seen. So I’ll go around the table and say, “Ok, here we are, we are maxed out in all our areas.” Our Ontario guy says, “No, I really don’t have anybody I like.” So it’s at that point if you have somebody that wants to fight for somebody and you say, “Ok, we’ll take a shot on this guy.” But almost always it’s a player that was already on our list.

There’s more behind the paywall. [The Athletic DFW]

Stars Stuff

Cirque du Soleil’s first show on ice is coming to Frisco this weekend, so Marty Turco and the Ice Girls joined them for a little skate.

Comerica Center has a lot of weekend plans, as it turns out – it’s the site of a Stars equipment sale on June 22.

Around The League(s)

The St. Louis Blues received their first Stanley Cup after beating the Boston Bruins 4-1 in Game 7.

Here’s Conn Smythe winner Ryan O’Reilly dropping the “only I didn’t say fudge” word on a live mic.

Rory Boylen skimmed the Twitter reaction.

And Emily Sadler looks at some of the storylines from the Blues’ worst-to-first season. [Sportsnet]

The Bruins, thisclose to hoisting the Cup again, now have to reflect on what went wrong.

Meanwhile, the CHL has many, many kids up for the NHL Draft in Vancouver, and they made you this card so you don’t forget.

Wasn’t Matt DeFranks just talking about Alex Newhook? Get to know him a little better.

Finally

We now cut to live footage of that guy who won $100,000 for betting on the Blues. (Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s still partying.) Enjoy.

Talking Points