Jim Nill Speaks To The Media On Exit Interview Day
By Josh Clark
Dallas Stars general manager Jim Nill spoke to the media on Monday morning during the Stars’ exit interview day. This is the last day that the media would be able to freely talk to the players and coaching staff until training camp in September.
Here is coverage of Jim Nill’s entire interview:
The biggest questions for him in the upcoming offseason about trades, contracts, etc.:
We made a lot of changes during the season, probably more changes than we anticipated. You look at our back end, we brought in four young guys from Austin that won the Calder Cup. They came up. Some got hurt, some went up and down during the year. But to bring in four young guys in transition, we probably did that ahead of schedule almost out of necessities and injuries and other cases. In the end, that’s probably going to be the thing that helps us the most going forward.
About missing the playoffs for the first time in his management career:
It’s a feeling you don’t like. We talked to the players this morning and it’s difficult. We’re going to watch the playoffs and realize that we are as good as a lot of those teams, and that’s the tough part. That’s the learning process we have to go through. We have to realize that it’s an 82 game schedule, we dug a hole for ourselves very early, and we had a great run from December 13th on, our record was 30-19-5, one of the best records in the league. But we dug a hole for ourselves.
About whether he thinks the team needs changes or not:
I guess I’m going to talk out of both sides of my mouth. Every day you’re trying to get better. Every day we come to the rink and look at different scenarios that could make you better. But on the second hand you have to realize that we are a young team on the right path. We just have to learn to play the right way. There is a way to play the game and we have to learn to win consistently. A lot of times we let games get away from us and that is something we got better at towards the end of the season. We saw the team we were, and the last 50 games we were the team we wanted to be.
On Jhonas Enroth’s shortened season and how they will move forward with the UFA:
Jhonas did a great job. He got off to a little bit of a rough start early. He had a couple games that he probably wants back. But the last two or three weeks he played very well. He gave us solid goaltending. He didn’t have to be spectacular, just solid, and that’s what you need to have success in this league.
Next: Jamie Benn: A Year in Review
On Jamie Benn taking the Art Ross Trophy on Fan Appreciation Night:
That was a really special moment. It’s an amazing feat that he did. I saw a stat the other day where he’s the only person to win the scoring race that has never led the scoring race during the season at any time. That’s an amazing thing. If you look at him during the season, he was somewhere around 7th to 12th in the scoring race all year, but he never led it. For that kind of magic moment to happen late just shows the type of person he is. When you do things right, good things happen, and he’s a great example of that. Something a lot of people don’t realize is that he’s going to be getting an operation here soon. He needs hip surgery at the end of the season. He played the whole season like that.
How big of a problem it was for Jamie through the year:
He had a lot of pains and a lot of nights where we didn’t think he’d be playing. But he would come to us and say, ‘No, I’m a player,’ and that’s Jamie Benn. We didn’t hear about it all season. He wasn’t coming to us saying, ‘You know what, I had a bad game and it’s because of my injury.’ We never heard a thing about it: that’s Jamie Benn. He had two or three shots during the season that helped him get through things, but to gut it out the way he did and have the success just shows that we have a great leader on this team.
On his recovery time:
He’ll be very similar to [John] Klingberg and Val Nichushkin. Same procedure and it’s going to be about 4-5 months of rehab and we’ll go from there. It’s a major surgery but he’ll bounce back from it and probably be a better player than he was now.
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On if he’ll be ready for training camp:
If there is one silver lining to missing the playoffs, it is that his surgery will be about a month before everyone else’s. He’ll be ready for training camp and ready to go.
On what the final record this season says about how to start next season:
That was the message in the meeting today. We started training camp last year with a lot of changes. We added some high end offense and some changes made throughout the team. I think there was a mentality that we were going to be this run-gun team, and we can be that way. We’re good at it and we can do that. But in any sport, it doesn’t matter where you play, to be successful you have to play good defense on top of it. We’re fortunate because we know that we can score at any time. We’re as gifted as any team in the league. We know we can score anytime so there should be no urgency that we have to worry when we get behind. We have to keep teams and games tight, and when we do that we are a hard team to beat.
Assessing the poor goaltending numbers:
The goalie is a part of the team. Just like our team defense, our forwards have to be better and our defense has to be better. Our goaltending, they know they have to be better too. That wasn’t Kari’s best season, and he admits that. He’s part of this team and he’s got to be better. To win in this league you have to have good goaltending.
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On how Tyler Seguin needs to take missing the final game:
I think he just has to learn. It’s a learning process. We’re a young team and Tyler knows he made a mistake. He knows the consequences and it’s dealt with. He handled it very well. It was tough for him to sit out and watch the team in that last game and see the success they had on the ice. But he’ll bounce back from it and learn from it, and it’ll make him an even better person down the road.
On what Jamie Benn’s neglecting to acknowledge his injury says about him:
Well it shows that we have one of the best captains around. I don’t even think some of the players knew about it. He never used it as an excuse all year. He got off to a tough start early on, and it would have been easier to come out and say he was hurt a little bit, but he didn’t. There was no excuse and he battled through it, and like I said we’ve got a great leader.
On where they shoot for in the playoff standings:
In the end, we want to be the best and I think we’re on the right path. It’s going to take time and we’re going to have to go over some bumps and valleys, but you look at any team that has been successful and you see that they go through these. We’re very fortunate that we have some of the most gifted players in the league playing for us. We have the leading scorer in the league and one in the top five, and if he didn’t get hurt we would’ve had the number one and number two.
Jason Spezza was top 30 in scoring, and John Klingberg came out of nowhere and he is one of the candidates for rookie of the year. We’ve got some great young talent coming up as well, so the future is very bright. There are going to be some ups and downs and it’s a tight league. The difference for us is just two or three wins. It’s funny because my talk last year at this time was that we were two or three wins from being out of the playoffs, and this year we are two or three wins from being in it. That’s how tight the league is.
Confirmations for the world championship team:
Jason Spezza, Tyler Seguin, and Cody Eakin. They are all going to play for Canada. We have [Antoine] Roussel going for France. The U.S. and Sweden teams have called in for a couple of players, but I haven’t heard their decisions yet.
Any other injury updates:
Ales Hemsky has almost the same injury as Benn. He played most of the year with it as well, and it was another one of those that was kept quiet. He had a tough season and I give him credit because he was a lot like Jamie Benn. He gutted it out and never complained about it. He missed a lot of practices and he couldn’t because of the pain. But he was never going to take himself out of the lineup and he did a great job. He’ll need hip surgery and a lot like the same process that Jamie Benn is going to go through.
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On Alex Goligoski’s possibility of an injury:
Goligoski, as far as we know of, is okay. He’s just banged up. He was hurt very early in the season, and he had some broken bones. Another guy that for the first two months he didn’t practice because he couldn’t, but he played all the games. We had some guys banged up and it was a tough season injury-wise. We lose Nemeth in the fifth game of the year, and Nichushkin in the fourth game of the year. It’s one thing when you lose guys for 2-3 months or six weeks, but we lost these guys almost for the full season. So it’s tough that way, and then you add in these other guys that are banged up and it’s a tough season. But that’s part of the game and it challenged our depth, which was good. We got to see the McKenzie’s and Ritchie’s come up and all the young defensemen come up. In the end, it’s going to pay in dividends for us down the road.
On any possible unknown players on the brink of a call-up for next year:
Texas is going to be in the playoffs. They’ve done a good job and what people forget sometimes is that when we get injured up here, we bring the best players up. We’re taking their best players away and that affects their roster down there. It was opportunity for other guys down there and they did a great job hanging in there and made the playoffs. You saw the McKenzie’s and Ritchie’s up here.
We’ve got Esa Lindell who we brought over to play five games, but he’s now back in Finland and he’s going to play for Finland in the World Championships, so we’re excited about him. We’ve got the next group of players coming in, with Dickinson, Elie, Drew Shore. We’ve got some good, young players who are just turning pro. They’re probably all not a year away just yet, but they’re knocking on the door.
We look forward to watching everyone in the playoffs. It’s a lot like last year when Texas won the Calder Cup, this is where you find out the steps that players take. We lost Radek Faksa, he ended up with an injury. He probably would have gotten some games up here, but he had shoulder surgery in February and was done for the season. We’ve got some good, young kids and the playoffs will be a test for them.
On any possible upcoming contract negotiations:
Players don’t usually go to the World Championships unless they have a contract or in the event of an injury. I’ve talked to Klingberg’s agent and we’ve had some talks. He’ll get back in touch with me and hopefully we can get something done so that he can go play for Sweden. That would be good for him.
Looking at other UFA’s like Horcoff, Eaves, etc.:
The organization is going to sit down along with some of the pro scouts and evaluate the team and make some decisions. We’ll see where we are going to be at moving forward. They are all players that played a big role for us and did a good job for us. We would like to bring them all back, but we’ll have to see where we stand.
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On whether Kari Lehtonen is the guy to lead the Stars through the playoffs:
I believe he is. He did it for us last year. He got us into the playoffs and he needed to bounce back this year. It wasn’t all on him, a lot of it was the way we played early. He kind of went into a funk and he is the first one to admit it. He knows he has to be better just like everyone else in this room knows they have to be better.
On being named GM for Canada in the World Championships:
It’s great anytime you can represent your country. This will be my third one, and I hope it’s my last one. Hopefully next time we’re in the playoffs they don’t give me the call. But it’s an honor when you can do it. It helps me grow. I get to see other players and meet players on other teams. I get to be with a good management team and bounce some good ideas off. It’s a great learning tool.
This covers the last of the personnel that the media had a chance to interview.
We will have complete coverage of the exit interview day as the week goes on. Continue to check back to Blackout Dallas for interviews with players as we make them accessible!
Next: Lindy Ruff Speaks To Media On Exit Interview Day
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