Notebook: Schaefer's early success. Islanders and retribution? Are the Stars good? And memory lane.
Here's another notebook, hope you enjoy your Friday.
Happy Friday.
Let’s start this notebook with a flashback to November 2024, almost a year to the day.
I was in London, Ontario to cover the 2024 CHL USA Prospects Challenge for Elite Prospects. As part of the lead-up to that event, we sat down with each of the players from Team CHL to talk about their seasons, the upcoming NHL Draft and other fun stuff, like players wishing a “happy birthday” to Elite Prospects.
That included Matthew Schaefer and Malcolm Spence signing Happy Birthday in the video below.
Roughly a year later, I caught up with Schaefer on Thursday when the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft was in Detroit for a game against the New York Islanders.
Schaefer has been one of the more fun stories in the NHL this season, already registering 15 points in 21 NHL games as an 18-year-old and as the youngest player in the league — he was 17 when September started.
I’m a big believer that playing defense in the NHL is one of the hardest jobs for a young player. You are exposed by the nature of the position, there’s no where to hide and the league rather quickly picks up on your inefficiencies.
It’s easy to be confident in the offensive zone, it’s another thing entirely to keep that confidence in the defensive zone and keep a coach’s trust at the same time.
Schaefer told me, that for him, it’s been a learning curve, but it’s been more about the confidence he’s been given by New York Islanders coach Patrick Roy. How he was given a chance to ramp up a bit in minutes early in the season, but has since been allowed to be himself.
“I can play my game, it’s not about having to reinvent myself to play in the NHL,” Schaefer said. “I think that’s something that’s been the biggest part of this.”
I asked Roy about it, who compared Schaefer to his time in Colorado when he had Nathan MacKinnon as a teenager.
Speaking of the Islanders and Roy, there was a lot of stuff this week about what happened on Tuesday in Dallas when Mikko Rantanen’s collision with Alexander Romanov injured the Islanders defender and led to Roy screaming at Rantanen about how he wouldn’t finish the game in New York, which won’t happen until March.
I did some straw polling of the Islanders locker room yesterday, with anonymity, and players were obviously concerned for their teammate and they didn’t like the play, but there also wasn’t too much hatred geared toward Rantanen. It was a weird play, feet got tangled up, and in the moment the coach got pretty fiery about it.
I gave Roy a bit of a pass about it on the DLLS show Wednesday, and I’ve been thinking more and more about my stance on that. I don’t know if I’ve completely pivoted views, but I think there is something to be said about the responsibility of the position as a head coach.
Roy can be passionate, he can be fiery, but we also need to hold coaches more accountable when it comes to yelling a players. Again, not sure if I have the exact answer, but I’ve been thinking about it myself over the past couple days.
I had a 20/20 up from the Stars game last night against the Vancouver Canucks, which you should read here.
But waking up this morning, after only getting about five hours of sleep, something really popped for me about where the Stars are in the current NHL landscape.
Let’s look at the standings.
Now let’s sort the top-10 by goal differential.
The Colorado Avalanche are the class of the NHL right now, no question about that.
But for all the hemming and hawing about things in Dallas, the Stars solidly in the second-tier with the Carolina Hurricanes and New Jersey Devils as teams that have proven the most through 20ish games.
So I was curios and sent a couple texts to NHL scouts about the Stars, there positioning and whether they are a “paper tiger” or not when it comes to the current setup.
Here are some of the answers.
“I think they are just an injured team that’s found a way to win through the hard part of their season.”
“I’m a bit concerned about the defensive zone coverage, honestly. If they weren’t in the same division as Colorado I’d have less concerns.”
“They are too skilled not to be a contender, that’s a deep team.”
I wrote a story this morning for Elite Prospects on Chicago Blackhawks prospect Mason West.
As part of that story, I connected with my friend Mike Craven to breakdown West’s football prowess.
It also reminds me of a decision I made in my life, that led me to this spot as opposed to potentially covering football full time.
In the summer of 2016, I had accepted a full-time job with the Austin America-Statesman to cover University of Texas recruiting. I was actively driving home from the pre-job drug test, the final step to get everything going, when I got a call from the editor at NHL.com.
They had an opening for a freelance position in Dallas, covering the Stars for NHL.com, but it only paid per game and they knew I didn’t live in DFW.
That moment was when I chose to take a risk and truly become a hockey writer. I turned down the full-time job in Austin, moved to DFW to freelance and work on a game-by-game basis for NHL.com, and it somehow in a super weird way led to the life I have now.
Life is weird. Embrace it. Take some risks, believe in yourself.
As always, thanks for reading.