Dallas — Jim Nill gave it some thought. He was forced to. After watching his team go from a division championship to sixth place in the 2016–17 season, the general manager of the Dallas Stars saw nothing but terrible omens when he looked at his squad.
According to Nill, the Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin era was “losing steam.” Ales Hemsky and Patrick Sharp, who were brought in to assist prop open Dallas’ window of contention, were hurt and headed out. It was “beginning to time out” for Jason Spezza. The pay cap assured that little hope was coming from without, and a few weak drafts meant little relief was imminent from within. Given how dire things were, Nill met with Tom Gaglardi, the owner of the Stars, and his team to discuss all of his alternatives.
Blowing it all up. Tearing it all down. Tanking.
“I’ll be honest, I was getting worried,” Nill told The Athletic. “We were getting to the point where it was like, boy, where is this going? My biggest fear was for this franchise.”
If this were taking place in Chicago, New York, or a Canadian metropolis, Nill might have sunk, trading his top players for prospects and draft selections and having to start again. The NHL operates under a system that you either love or despise. For some teams, anyway. Not every group enjoys such advantages. Not every team has that kind of support from its supporters. Not every team can intentionally aim to lose and sell more than 18,000 tickets each night. A team cannot survive in a tank.
“This is not a traditional hockey market,” Nill said. “It’s tough to be mediocre, and it’s tough to tank. We couldn’t do that for two or three years (because) there’s a business side to it. And it was getting to be a real concern. I’m like, boy, are we going to get stuck in the muddy middle here and never get out of it?”
Seven springs later, Nill is seated in a seat at American Airlines Center, a towel honoring the Stars’ most recent postseason run, thinking back on that fateful offseason. The club he skillfully put together is still playing in late May, hours before the Western Conference final Game 2 puck drops. This is Dallas’ third consecutive trip to the third round and its second in the previous five years. The Edmonton Oilers, who had to go through a wilderness for ten long years in order to accumulate first-round draft picks and endure an unfathomable period of losing that the Stars might not have been able to withstand, were getting ready for their own skate beneath the bleachers. Two of the best hockey teams, with radically different builds on both sides.
No, the Stars did not collapse after the 2016–17 campaign. They made adjustments. They experimented. The discussions that began with such a depressing perspective produced a new way of thinking about team building, drafting, and developing. They shifted the emphasis of their draft from size to skill. They advocated for prospects to be patient. They placed their hopes on Roope Hintz, a promising talent who is now playing in Finland. They also enjoyed the draft of a lifetime after hitting it lucky and moving up from eighth to third in the lottery.
Miro Heiskanen. Jake Oettinger. Jason Robertson.
“It saved the franchise,” Nill said. “It gave us new life.”
It was only the beginning.
After the first few selections, the NHL Draft is always a bit of a lottery. You are assuming what an adolescent will look like, play like, and act like years ahead of time as a scout or general manager. Even though it is a well-informed guessing game, guessing is still involved. But the proposal for 2021 was a completely different story. Due to the pandemic, teams were selecting players they may not have ever met in person. In their draft-eligible season, many of them did not play at all since COVID-19 almost eliminated junior hockey for a year. Both the sample size and institutional knowledge were small. Luck was more important than ever.
Consider Wyatt Johnston. He had participated in all seven of Team Canada’s under-18 competitions in 2021. His job was third-line. He contributed two assists and two goals. He was alright. However, those matches took place in Texas, with a couple of them taking place at the Frisco, Texas, home of the Stars. Joe McDonnell, the chief scout for the Stars, was enamored. The fact that Johnston’s 2020–21 season was postponed did not matter. It made little difference that, as a sixteen-year-old in Windsor, he was, in Nill’s words, merely “OK.” Johnston was what McDonnell desired. awfully. And the more he investigated him and discovered about him and his family, the more confident he became that Johnston was the ideal candidate for Dallas.
“It’s just kind of a feel when you’re an amateur scout,” Nill said.
Nill was on board, but the general manager believed he could still acquire Johnston by trading down from No. 15 because to the peculiar draft pool and his relatively low profile. Johnston would fall to Nill later in the first because he knew the two top goaltenders in the draft, Sebastian Cossa and Jesper Wallstedt, were probably going to be traded in the interim. He consequently fell back to No. 23, earning a Detroit second-round pick in the process.
Nill got his man in Johnston at No. 23. He picked Logan Stankoven, a top player from Kamloops, in the second round. Just three years later, both are Dallas’ top six forwards, logging significant power play time and inspiring fans to believe that the team can contend with the best in the NHL long after veterans Joe Pavelski, Benn, and Seguin retire. (As an added bonus, Nill combined the choice Dallas acquired from Detroit with second- and third-round selections to acquire defenseman Christopher Tanev before the trade deadline.)
Defenseman Thomas Harley, who the Stars selected at No. 18 two years ago, is currently a productive top-four defender in Dallas. Mavrik Bourque, who led the American Hockey League in scoring this season and is expected to make his NHL debut in the autumn, was selected by the Stars in 2020 at pick No. 30. Despite not having a first-round pick, Dallas was able to acquire Tristan Bertucci, a defenseman who is already in the running, last spring.
Aside from the fortunate circumstance that led to the acquisition of Heiskanen, the Stars have amassed an incredible group of youthful talent by selecting late first- and second-round picks. It is a far cry from the results of Nill’s first four drafts, which included only Hintz (2013 picks Jason Dickinson and Valeri Nichushkin went on to have success elsewhere).
“I’m not saying we’ve got it all figured out,” Nill said. “We’ve made mistakes, too. But we’ve self-evaluated and we changed our philosophy a little bit. We started to see a shift in the game and we started to focus a little bit more on the skill side. Our scouts really started to hone in on what our needs were and started finding that extra value. They’re digging and they’re finding the right players that we need.”
Benn and Seguin remain here, continuing to contribute. Pavelski remains a crucial component. At 39 years old, Ryan Suter is still playing a big role in the back end. However, this is now a young man’s team. With seven goals in the postseason, Johnston leads the Stars in scoring. Averaging over 28 minutes per game, Heiskanen leads the team in points with 14. Robertson has already had two seasons with 40 goals and 13 points. In the postseason, Stankoven has come through and performed well when Hintz was sidelined. Harley has scored 47 points in the regular season while averaging over 24 grueling minutes every night.
“First off, they’re really good young players,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “It doesn’t matter how good the culture is, you’re not hiding. The fact that in double overtime (of Game 1), you’ve got Johnston and Stankoven on the ice against (Connor) McDavid, that’s a testament to the trust we have in those kids and how good they are — the future of the program. Because that’s a big ask and those guys have done that every round of the playoffs. Against (Nathan) MacKinnon last round. Against (Jack) Eichel in the first round. Same with Harley. It’s a great feeling as a coach. I think every coach wants to play young guys; we all understand the importance of that. But young guys have to allow you to play them, too, especially this time of year.”
How can Dallas continue to succeed? It definitely begins with good players and good drafting, as DeBoer stated. However, it goes beyond that. Not only does Dallas find talented athletes. It consistently positions them for success. The actual trick is that.
As a new tenant, Johnston’s initial impression of Pavelski’s house was a little… uncomfortable.
“The first few weeks, he didn’t know where to sit in the living room,” Pavelski said with a laugh. “There were moments where he was just standing there. I’m like, ‘Sit down. Sit next to me on the couch, if you want. It’ll be all right.’”
Though Stankoven lived with Pavelski when he was initially called up, Johnston and Pavelski have been the Stars’ most celebrated May-December rivalry. At the Stars, there is a general belief that new players should be treated as equals and welcomed into the club, adding to the senior group rather than merely replacing them.
That also applies to DeBoer, who has not shied away from assigning young players to key positions. To ease a rookie player into the NHL, some coaches place him on a fourth line, but that just puts him in a role he is not used to and does not suit him well. It makes him an easy target. DeBoer forces kids to quickly learn how to swim by throwing them into the deep end.
According to Johnston, DeBoer’s system’s relative simplicity is also beneficial.
“The biggest thing is he lets us use our strengths and play offensively,” Johnston said. “We’re not required to dump the puck in every time we have it past the red line. We’re able to play our game and make plays. We’re here to make plays, we’re not here to dump the puck in and get on the forecheck and try to get it back. … He’s been awesome with me. I obviously make a few mistakes, and he hasn’t ever really held that against me or benched me for a period or anything like that.”
Since no one is truly in their way, DeBoer and the Stars are disproving the notion that prospects have easier routes to success with rebuilding clubs. Yes, at the age of eighteen this season, Connor Bedard, Leo Carlsson, and Adam Fantilli skated straight into the NHL, but they were on bad teams with bad linemates. In those circumstances, it can be simple to fall into unhealthy habits and a losing mindset. Johnston, Stankoven, Harley, and the other youthful Stars joined a squad that was characterized by excellent habits, a positive team environment, and excellent teammates.
That is positioning a participant for success. In spite of being selected 23rd by a team that had just finished in the Stanley Cup Final the previous season, Johnston has played the fourth-most games of his draft class in this manner. In spite of the fact that 20 guys selected ahead of him have not yet been in the show, Stankoven has already proven himself to be a capable NHL player after playing in 24 games.
“You see a lot of young kids come into the league, and when they’re young, their team isn’t that great,” Robertson said. “Here, with the standard we’ve built with the veterans in this locker room, we keep everyone accountable. We saw it last year with (Johnston’s) first year. He and Chubbs (Benn) played together the whole year. They’ve earned it, (Johnston’s) earned it, I’ve earned it, (Stankoven’s) earned it. But our coaching staff has been phenomenal with the young guys in that way. The foundation that has been here for a long time really lets young guys be young guys and really lets them succeed.”
“First, it’s up to the player,” Stankoven said. “If a player wants it bad enough, then he’ll make it. But it’s about opportunity here, and the staff has been really good to myself and some of the other younger guys to put us in the right situation to succeed. Then it’s just up to us to get the job done.”
Although the organization is emphatic about not pushing players to the NHL, Nill noted they are also obviously not afraid to promote a player. That really boils down to having faith in the coaching across the board—from DeBoer and his NHL staff to Neil Graham, the coach of the Texas Stars, and developmental coaches. A player seems to know just when to call it quits when they are prepared. For instance, Stankoven may have been called up sooner in the season, but the Stars did not have to rush him because of their organizational depth. They waited until late February to call him up, letting him get a touch overripe in the AHL.
Within his first six games, he scored five goals. One more Stars achievement tale.
“I don’t have a silver bullet,” Nill said. “I’m not smarter than everybody else. It’s really just being considerate of each individual and their unique situation. Where are they at? Are they ready yet? Do they need two or three years? Everybody’s on a different path.”
But for the Stars, every one of those routes appears to go in the same direction; there are no mistakes, diversions, or uncertainties. Not to mention tanks.
(Top photo of Wyatt Johnston: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
