By Ethan Smedley
This off-season after very shaky management last season, the Dallas Stars organization brought two people to lead their GM role for the team, the two they brought on would be Ethan Smedley and Payton Knoph. The crazy thing about these two is that they have a combined age of 30 years old, this makes them the youngest to ever manage a team at 15 years old a piece. I had the opportunity to sit and have a chat with these two, to talk about their first off-season and how their first ever FNHL game went. Here is what they had to say...
"This team had talent when we arrived, we just needed to get players that will improve the team for cheap." - Mr. Knoph
This is exactly what they did, without giving up anything but minor pieces here is who they got:
- Derek Dorsett
- Vladislav Namestnikov
- Joe Basaraba
- Rickard Rakell
- Josh Harding
- And Finally their 10 overall pick, Moritz Seider
For these pieces they only gave up minor parts of the team, here is what Mr. Knoph had to say,
"These were the guys we want and we got them for very little, this is a huge boost going forward."
Lets see how these new additions do for the stars in this next season.
Last night a lot of you know was the first day of the new FNHL season as well as the first game for Payton Knoph and Ethan Smedley. The Stars played against one of the favorites to make the Eastern Conference playoffs out of the Metropolitan Division, the Columbus Blue Jackets. The score was 4-1 Blue Jackets, even with a loss there was a bright side, this was that Clayton Keller scored, we will say more on him later. The real problem for the Stars was that their 2nd line allowed 3 goals on even strength. Here is what Mr. Smedley had to say about this,
"We saw the performance out of our 2nd line, we feel there is no need to panic yet but if this a problem that keeps going on we will change something."
The Stars management seems to have a bright future so does their big 3. The big 3 consists of Clayton Keller, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, and Timothy Liljergren. These 3 all have a huge future with all of them being under 23 years old. The Stars look for these 3 to be the future of their team for years to come.
The final conversation I had with these two was about Mr. Knoph's father who is the current GM of the Arizona Coyotes, Ken Knoph. Here is what his son had to say,
"I would not want this any other way, being in the same conference, being in the same division just brings up more chances to get wins against him." - Payton Knoph
"We are very competitive people, especially against Payton's dad who I have known for 4 years myself." - Ethan Smedley
After talking with these two I am very excited to see what they are able to do in the future, and what is to come in the Stars organization.
10/21/2020 - 509 words
