Drafting and development are the most effective ways to build a successful NHL team. The Dallas Stars understand this, but their ability to succeed in those areas over the past few years has left a lot to be desired.

The good news, however, is that the organization appears to have turned a necessary corner.

After disappointing draft crops in 2013 and 2014, they are starting to see an impact being made in the NHL from members of their 2015 class, while the 2016, 2017, and 2018 drafts have produced a deep pool of young prospects who are performing well across a number of different leagues. The Stars have also hit it big with a few undrafted free agent signings, helping to fix some of the pipeline holes left by their weaker drafts.

With all of that being said, now is a good time to take a closer look at the organization’s development pipeline and release another edition of Defending Big D’s Dallas Stars Prospect Rankings.

The previous edition of these rankings, which came out in November, can be found here.

For consistency, I’m using the same definition of “prospect” as before: “Any player who played fewer than 25 NHL games this season or last season, or fewer than 50 NHL games overall, is considered a prospect. The upper limit on the age cutoff is 26 years old. In exceptional cases, a player may be graduated from prospect status without having yet met these criteria.”

Graduated from last edition’s rankings: Roope Hintz

Please note that these rankings are based around the projection of a player’s potential NHL ceiling and their chances of reaching that ceiling, not who is the closest to NHL duty. These potential NHL ceilings are evaluated based on each player’s cumulative careers up to this point, which explains why, for example, someone that was great last year but is struggling right now might be ranked higher than someone that is having an unexpected breakout season.

Without further ado, here now are the 20 player rankings, which also showcase each player’s previous position on the list, their ages, and a brief explanation outlining why they’re listed where they are.