Dallas Stars Must Protect Potential Of Upcoming Players

Under Hitch, the Dallas Stars have had a somewhat dismissive attitude toward young up and comers. For the Stars to excel, they have to start embracing the new blood.

Nobody likes cliques. You didn’t like them in high school, and none of us like them when we see them in our everyday lives now. At work, at local hang outs- the sad thing is, cliques are kind of embedded into the fabric of our society and probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

However, if the Dallas Stars want a fighting chance at greatness next season and beyond, they’ll rethink how they allow cliques to operate in their organization.

Now, Dallas Stars cliques are not your typical normal-life cliques. Don’t imagine the Dallas Stars cast into iconic Mean Girls roles (but maybe do because without playoffs, how else are we to entertain ourselves?).

The Dallas Stars clique-problem lies in how difficult it is for young players to move up into the team and earn a sure place based on demonstrated merit. This should be a scary thing for Stars fans witnessing this season because the Dallas Stars organization has thrived off young blood in the past.

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Now, under their new Hitchcock system, the Stars don’t seem to be properly utilizing or appreciating some of their younger, talented players. Down the stretch of this nightmarish season, its been veteran and well-known makes that have seen the most ice time, despite the contributions of green players throughout the season.

At this point, then, we have a conundrum. If coaches like Hitch are waiting for good, young players to get better before playing them with regularity but at the same time denying them the ice time necessary to practice and prove themselves consistently, we’re stuck in a pesky and destructive cycle of unintelligence.

As per Fox Sports, the Stars’ ice time leaders so far this season have been guys like Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, John Klingberg, and Alexander Radulov. Esa Lindell also cracked the top of the list and we’re celebrating on the inside for him.

None of this is surprising- most teams will operate in the same way, so there’s no real issue there. Where the issue lies, however, is that none of the Stars’ AHL transplants and hopefuls really breached the very bottom of the ice-time barrel this season.

Remi Elie, Gemel Smith, and Jason Dickinson never made it past the ten minute per game mark, while Devin Shore, Julius Honka, and Dillon Heatherington hovered around slightly on both sides of the eleven minute mark.

While it’s nice to see them getting ice time at all, these stats don’t account for the inconsistency with with these guys are getting accustomed to seeing it under Hitch, and that could be their real problem.

Next: Stars Should Give Mike McKenna Another Start

As the Stars start to shift and change gears after the last few games of this season in pursuit of a better next one, the Dallas Stars organization will hopefully see the need to break up their own cliques and instead be smart about investing in the next generation of their players.

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