Dallas Stars: 2017 Offseason Is Best So Far Under Jim Nill
By Josh Clark
The 2017 offseason hype is quickly nearing its end, giving way to the dog days of the hockey summer. But the moves made by the Dallas Stars this offseason will help make this Jim Nill’s best one yet.
Every athlete has a best season. They could be a superstar or just a regular depth player, but each one has a season in their career that stands out among the rest.
Maybe it comes in their first two or three years and is considered their “breakout” season, or maybe it comes later in their career during a championship run. Either way, there’s that one season that the player is known for.
The same can be said about sports teams. There is that one season that simply outdoes all of the other ones throughout the franchise’s history. They may have ten championships under their belt, but there always seems to be the consensus season that seems to top the others.
For the Dallas Stars, it’s obviously the 1998-99 season. The Stars were first in the conference, hit the 114-point mark for the first and only time in franchise history, and capped it off with their first and only Stanley Cup victory. Since then, there just hasn’t been a season that has fully lived up to this one.
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But athletes and organizations aren’t the only entities that can have a “best” season. Another group in this ranking are the general managers of teams. That includes Dallas Stars general manager Jim Nill.
There are hundreds of GMs across professional sports and they are constantly being changed out when their teams are struggling. Stars’ GM Jim Nill doesn’t have to worry about that simply because of the reputation he has built as a general manager who knows how to get things done.
Ever since “coming into office” in April of 2013, the Dallas Stars have been one of the most aggressive teams in every NHL offseason since. Nill’s ability to be consistent in making big moves regardless of the price in an effort to improve his team has helped solidify him as one of the best in the business over the years.
And the 2017 offseason is no different. Over the past three months, Nill crafted some impressive deals for big-name players, rounding out his roster and making it look even more powerful than before.
This is coming off of a horrible 34-37-11 showing in 2016-17, so the bar to improve the team was set extremely high. Luckily, Nill not only met it, but he surpassed it.
With that being said, it’s easy and encouraging to call this Nill’s best offseason ever as GM of the Stars.
It’s Nill’s fifth offseason as the Stars’ GM, so there are plenty of summers to compare this year’s successes with. After all, some general managers don’t even make it to a fifth offseason.
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But the primary reason that 2017 became Nill’s best offseason in Dallas was because of the consistency and balance that he showed throughout the past three months. This is balance that we have not necessarily seen from him in past years.
Everyone remembers Nill’s first offseason for one thing: the Tyler Seguin trade. Besides the addition of the young superstar, there weren’t many other noteworthy moves and the Dallas Stars ended up squeaking into the playoffs as a wild card before being eliminated in the first round.
In his second swing, he managed to acquire superstar center Jason Spezza through trade. But once again, this move proved to be the only one of the offseason that had a significant impact on the team the following year, and that ended up hurting the Stars. With inconsistent goaltending and a young defensive group, Dallas fell seven points short of the playoffs.
Then came the 2015 offseason. The vibe around the Stars community was that it was time for some serious change. That change came with the additions of Antti Niemi, Patrick Sharp, Stephen Johns, and Johnny Oduya. Nill purposefully picked up a veteran player in each position to help round out the overall young caliber of the team.
It paid off with flying colors, as Dallas managed to work its way into the top spot in the Western Conference and enter the playoffs with an impressive 50-23-9 record. Though they enjoyed regular season success, it did not fully carry over into the postseason, with the Stars falling in the second round.
The 2016 offseason is one that Stars fans likely want to forget about entirely. Besides adding Dan Hamhuis, Dallas released some incredible depth into free agency and lost the bulk of their defensive group. All of this led to the second-worst season in franchise history in 2016-17.
And that’s why going into this current offseason, Nill had a lot on his to-do list. But now that he has checked off every box on his list, it’s clear that this offseason was where Nill drew the line.
He needed a new head coach, so he went out and reeled in one of the best defensive minds in the game in Ken Hitchcock. Not to mention that Hitchcock is the only coach to ever lead Dallas to the Cup Final. He needed a new goaltender, so he picked up veteran Ben Bishop who still has plenty of miles left and has proven to be one of the top goalies in the league.
He also needed a defensive defenseman, so he snagged Marc Methot in a brilliant trade with the Golden Knights. Then he focused on deepening his right wing by adding the aggressive and multidimensional scorer Alexander Radulov.
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And to add on to all of that, he acquired center Martin Hanzal in free agency. The Stars seemed stacked with center depth going into the offseason, but after adding Hanzal, the lineup looks more powerful than ever.
Nill found a way to improve every weak facet of the Stars’ game in 2016-17. He found a coach who is a defensive genius, locked in a Vezina-caliber goaltender to be the new starter, picked up a stay-at-home defender with great hockey IQ to match with his offensively-minded young defenders, and snagged two free agent forwards who will beef up one of the best offenses in the league. He also added solid depth to his special teams units.
That’s not easy to do in a salary-cap era, especially when the Dallas Stars avoided giving away or losing any significant pieces of their roster. Their only noteworthy losses turned out to be Cody Eakin and Patrick Sharp, and they replaced the two with Hanzal and Radulov. Advantage: Stars.
Nill swung for the fences in the 2017 offseason and did everything he set out to do. He made sure that this team avoided any sort of rebuild by simply making quick additions. Nill saw what was on the market and aggressively pursued the best viable options, playing hardball along the way and not laying down.
In past years, he has made noteworthy additions while simultaneously leaving some needs untouched. That has ended up hurting the team. But with the 2017 offseason, he left no stone unturned.
Next: Is There Anything Left For The Stars To Do This Offseason?
This 2017 Dallas Stars team is lining up on paper as one of the best in the league, and they should be very fun to watch. Nill has crafted together his best offseason as GM so far.
And with his quick wit and attention to detail this offseason, he deserves to reap the rewards. All that’s left to do is wait for the results.