How the Stars rookie reliance is reflective of Jim Nill’s old and new philosophies

Just a quick thought from watching on Thursday night.

There was a telling graphic on the Victory+ broadcast during the third period of the Dallas Stars 4-1 win against the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday.

As you can see in the image, amongst NHL teams, the Stars have the third-most points this season from Calder-eligible players. That’s particularly notable since amongst the top-five teams on that list, Dallas is the only one with legitimate playoffs aspirations this season.

For the Stars, it’s reflective of a couple things, most notably how general manager Jim Nill’s past and present ideologies are all colliding at once.

Nill is a patient GM, he has long been a believer in the over-ripening philosophy, where players spend more time in the AHL than they probably should. And of the Stars rookies this season, two only qualify as rookies because Nill over-ripened them last season — Logan Stankoven qualifies for Calder eligibility, but is more of a second-year NHLer, while Mavrik Bourque for almost any other NHL team would have graduated from rookie status last season.

Over-ripening is often referred to as a negative, and I often think Nill can be too patient with prospects, but there is a positive element when it comes to long-term development with players like Oscar Bäck, who is a rookie this season despite being part of the organization since the 2018 NHL draft.

Bäck is the ideal vision of over-ripening, the one we often don’t think about — teams willing to give players the time to develop into something, in the background, without ever giving up on them.

Bäck spent three years in the AHL, and was fine, but a far-from-notable prospect. He earned opportunity in the AHL, and internally the Stars were always quietly hopeful he’d grow into an NHL piece.

No pressure or expectation, and while Bäck won’t be turning heads on the regular, he’s become an NHL regular.

That’s Nill’s old vision, the over-ripening. The newer part of Nill’s philosophy in recent years has been softly embracing the NHL-wide view that players are NHL ready sooner than ever.

Nill still signs veterans that block younger players, look at the Stars defense, but he’s embraced more of the philosophy that young forwards don’t need to have NHL pedigree to be effective in middle or bottom-six roles.

None of this is groundbreaking, but it’s something that I couldn’t help but think about watching on Thursday night. Also, we’ll have more in the next couple days at this place that’s a bit longer and meatier, but I felt it was better write something short for the readers here than post on social media about it.