By David Fleet
Editor
At 7:30 a.m., Nov. 10, Ben Gleason got the call.
“’We’re sending a car to pick you up in 15 minutes,’” said Gleason, 20. “They had been calling me since 6:30 and I slept through them.”
Gleason’s early morning call was from the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League to join the team for Saturday’s game against the Nashville Predators.
“The game started at 1 p.m. and we got there at 11:15,” laughed Gleason, in a phone interview with The Citizen on Monday. “I was just so nervous—I was shaking the whole time. I tried not to look up in the stands, there were 18,000 people there. I don’t think I felt my legs until the second period. But I had just so much adrenaline it did not matter.”
If he was nervous it did not show. While the Stars lost 5-4 in OT to Nashville. Gleason played 18:13 minutes and recorded an assist with three takeaways.
“It’s what every kid growing up playing hockey dreams of, but it’s not easy. You can tell you’re in the NHL everything is so much faster but, it’s also easier to some extent—your teammates are always in the right position too.”
Then on Nov. 12, Gleason tallied 13:56 minutes with the Stars in a 2-1 loss to the Columbus Bluejackets.
Gleason was one of the players invited to skate in the NHL Prospect Tournament last September in Traverse City. On Sept. 13, Dallas Stars General Manager Jim Nill announced the signing of defenseman Gleason to a three-year, entry-level contract. Gleason, an Ortonville native who attended Brandon Schools started the hockey season with the Dallas Stars top affiliate team Texas Stars of the American Hockey League. The AHL team plays their home games in Cedar Park, Texas, near Austin.
According to the Dallas Stars, five of the 11 defensemen were on the bench due to a variety of injuries on Saturday prompting the call up of Gleason.
“Right now it’s day to day,” he said. “I’m just trying to earn a spot on the team.”
Gleason road to the NHL was drafted by the London Knights as the 36th draft pick overall in the second round of Ontario Hockey League’s 2014 Priority Selection.

The OHL is part of the Canadian Hockey League—a developmental hockey league with 60 teams in nine Canadian provinces and five American states. Many players move on to the National Hockey League after playing in the OHL.
In late April 2014 Gleason joined the Knights in London, about two hours from Ortonville, where he resided with a billet family while attending the Blyth Academy. On Oct. 7, 2015 Gleason was acquired and traded to the Hamilton Bulldogs.
On Sept. 24, 2015, Gleason was among 42 of the 2016 NHL draft-eligible players that participated in the 2015 CCM/USA Hockey All-American Prospects game at the First Niagara Centre in Buffalo, NY. Each year the top U.S. players who are eligible for the upcoming NHL entry draft are selected for the competition.
According to USA Hockey, 26 players that participated in the All American Prospects game went on to be chosen in the 2015 NHL entry draft, including seven first-round selections.
In 2014 Gleason, as a Brandon High School sophomore, was considered one of the top defenseman on a U18 Detroit Honeybaked travel team stocked with talent.
Gleason, finished ninth among all OHL defensemen with 48 points including 9 goals and 39 assists in 63 regular-season games with Hamilton in 2017-18. He also ranked eighth among league defensemen with 39 assists in 2017-18, while his six power play goals were good for sixth among OHL defensemen. Gleason registered 18 points including 3 goals and 15 assists in 21 postseason contests, helping Hamilton win the OHL championship. Gleason’s 18 points in the postseason shared first among OHL defensemen and were tied for fifth among all team skaters.