The Dallas Stars have yet to make their first round of cuts after training camp, but it’ll take more than one round to get to the opening night roster.
A lot of the Dallas Stars roster is already set, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t guys who’d benefit from staying on a little longer through the preseason.
Outside of the obvious players to keep up, the Stars should and likely will wait to send down any of the guys who have a shot at making the roster at some point during the season.
This means that players like Roope Hintz or Dillon Heatherington should stay until the end of pre-season. Heatherington is a likely call-up if there’s an injury to the defensive line-up, while Hintz looks ready to crack the NHL roster.
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Goaltending is a little dicier, as the Stars will likely switch out a lot of their prospects in early pre-season games. They also need to have some of the younger goaltenders prepped for a potential call-up during the year.
The Stars should also wait to cut prospects who won’t make the roster this year, but who probably will get their chance in the near future. This includes Nick Caamano, Jason Robertson, and Ty Dellandrea.
So who should go in the first round of cuts?
Usually guys on try-outs go first, unless they’re playing well enough to earn a contract. For the Stars this year, that’s Ben Gleason and Anthony Popovich. Gleason came in and had a fantastic showing in Traverse City, after which he signed an entry-level deal with the Stars. Popovich is younger and the Stars already have decent goaltending prospect depth, so he’s likely gone early.
Players who are just on AHL contracts often head out early as well. This would be guys like Shane Hanna, Sam Laberge, Robbie Payne, and James Phelan. They’re players who could theoretically earn an NHL deal, but none of them are likely to stick around too long, since they tend to be depth guys in the AHL.
The last group that usually heads home early in the pre-season are young prospects who will be staying with their juniors team for another year.
The difference between the youngest players who get cut early and the ones who stay on longer usually comes down a combination of draft positioning and performance. Caamano was a fifth-round draft pick, but he had an impressive camp and pre-season last year, whereas Dellandrea is going to get a better chance simply by virtue of being this year’s first round pick.
There are plenty of players that fall into this last category, and it’ll be up to the Jim Brain Trust to see how many players they want to carry during pre-season and for how long. However, guys like Riley Damiani, Brett Davis, or Jermaine Loewen could be the ones who don’t make it past the first or second round of cuts this year.
For any of the prospects that do get an early cut, it certainly doesn’t mean they don’t have a chance in the next few years. It just takes one good camp or one good season to hop up the prospect rankings.