The Traverse City Tournament ended on Monday evening and the Dallas Stars finished seventh overall. Though they didn’t have the best performance, there was still plenty to like about the tournament.
The Dallas Stars start training camp tomorrow morning, and there’s plenty to be excited about. The four-day camp will feature position battles, roster spot battles, and plenty of new faces and new skills.
Training camp is typically the pinnacle moment for the return of hockey season for most hockey fans. But for Dallas Stars fans, there are a few earlier happenings that bring along the remnants of hockey season. The Traverse City Tournament is one of those.
Every year, the Dallas Stars and seven other NHL franchises send a group of their best prospects to Traverse City, MI for a tournament. It’s a five-day event, with competition happening on Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. The prospect teams play a round-robin tournament and then finish the tournament playing for seventh, fifth, third, and first place.
The Stars’ 2017 team featured a diverse group of prospects in their system. There were highlight players like Denis Gurianov, Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, Gavin Bayreuther, and Landon Bow; but there were also surprise players like Nick Caamano, Shaw Boomhower, Brett Davis, and even Jeremy Brodeur.
Dallas Stars
The tournament gives prospects the chance to prove themselves in competition on a level playing field and prove their worth in preparation for the season ahead.
The tournament ended on Monday evening, and the Dallas Stars came out of it in seventh place. That is seventh out of eight teams. The Stars started the tournament off 0-3, losing to the Columbus Blue Jackets (7-2), St. Louis Blues (7-6 OT), and Minnesota Wild (4-2). They finished the tourney off with a 4-1 win over the New York Rangers to claim seventh and finish 1-2-1.
These results might have caught you off guard. For one, the Stars have a powerful and depth-filled prospect system. There are plenty of bright names that could be seen at the NHL level in a very short time.
In addition to that, the defense was leaky at best, giving up 19 goals over the four games.
But there was plenty of good within the tournament.
The biggest portion of it had to be the experience that was gained. The Dallas Stars’ farm system as a whole is looking for a bounce back year after struggling along during 2016-17 like the NHL team itself.
Another highlight would be the performance of Denis Gurianov. He started the tournament slow, but quickly picked up the pace, scoring four goals in his last two games, including a hat trick in the final game. The 2015 first-round pick could potentially have a big year with the Texas Stars this season.
All in all, the Stars’ prospect team seemed to start off slow and lackadaisical. But after gelling and playing deeper into the tournament, they began to make significant strides in the right direction.
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It wasn’t the best result, but it will definitely serve as a quality experience for many members of the Stars’ future.
And with Traverse City and media day finished up, let’s get on to the really fun stuff. Training camp is inbound.