The Stars announced yesterday that they’ve reassigned winger Emil Hemming to the OHL’s Barrie Colts. He had started the season on assignment to AHL Texas but will play out the remainder of the 2025-26 season back in junior hockey.
Hemming now figures in as the top forward prospect in a depleted Dallas pool. A late first-round pick in 2024 at No. 29 overall, he spent his draft year in his native Finland, recording seven goals in 11 points in 40 games for TPS in his country’s top pro league, Liiga. The Stars quickly got him signed to his entry-level contract. They could have loaned him back to TPS for the 2024-25 season, but Hemming instead opted to make the jump to North America and signed on with Barrie, which had selected him in that year’s CHL Import Draft.
The 6’2″ sniper didn’t have quite the impact he or the Stars hoped for. His output fell short of expectations for a first-round pick in his post-draft year, tallying 18 goals and 48 points in 60 regular-season games for the Colts. There was some apparent forward progress late in the year, though – he tallied nearly a point per game for Barrie in the playoffs with an 8-7–15 scoring line in 16 appearances.
On the whole, it’s still slightly underwhelming goal-scoring from a player drafted to do just that. Dallas was hopeful he could make an impact in the pros this season and sent him to their minor-league affiliate out of camp – something he was eligible for since he was drafted out of Finland, not the OHL – but he did not record a point through five games in the AHL. He’ll now look to get some confidence back in a lower-stakes, more familiar environment as he sets his sights toward making a smoother transition to pro hockey in 2026-27.