Dallas Stars Conference Call Pt. 2: Jim Nill

The Dallas Stars made a big move yesterday in signing pending UFA Antti Niemi to a three year deal worth $13.5 million. This contract officially locks down the Stars crease and labels it as a dual-threat that deserves to be feared.

The Stars hosted a conference call just moments after the signing so the media could talk to him as well as general manager Jim Nill. We covered Niemi’s conversation this morning, and now we will give you complete coverage of Jim Nill’s interview:

Jim Nill:

What he explored before making the move to sign Niemi:

We explored every angle of it. Back in May, we went to the free agent list and looked at our different options for goaltending and we had to make some changes. There were two ways we could’ve gone. One was the free agent road, and the other was to make a trade with either draft picks, prospects, or players off your team. Antti was the number one UFA that we had targeted. Over the course of the last 4-6 weeks, I’ve been talking to teams and seeing what the other options would be. But in the end, Antti always came out as the number one choice. I talked to Kari Lehtonen and he is very excited about it.

Kari and I talked and the travel in the West is probably as bad as it gets, and Dallas is probably worse off than a lot of other teams. Between the travel, back-to-back situations, our division being one of, if not the toughest, the competition. A win on the road or a back-to-back and a goalie gets injured, we know we have that covered now. Kari is looking forward to being with another number one goalie and being able to push each other and learn from each other. He was very comfortable with it. I also talked to Antti to check his comfort level, and he was very excited about it. We think for our team it was the way we had to go.

The biggest challenge of cutting down both goalie’s usual number of starts:

I think it’s going to be monitoring how much time in between their starts. It’s going to depend a little bit, but I think it’s something we’ll be able to manage going forward. Like I said, we have a very busy travel schedule with a lot of back-to-backs and some tough travel on back-to-backs on top of that. But the biggest thing is the time in between. The one thing with both of these goalies is that if you go back through their stats and history, they’re probably the top two goalies that played the most minutes in the Western Conference over the past few years.

I know a few games where Kari was either tired or injured but he had to play because we had no other choice and we had to win. This now gives us the opportunity that if someone is banged up a little bit, we have a couple days to rest them. Back-to-back we will know we have a rested goalie going in. I was talking to Jeff [Reese] and Mike [Valley] and they don’t think it is going to be a problem at all. They’re both competitive guys and they both prepare very well. They are both very excited about the opportunity.

On if there will be a true number one goalie:

No. We talked to both guys and Lindy and I talked about it. It doesn’t really matter. One guy will start the first game of the season and we will play it from there. But both guys will play a lot of games and there will be lots of opportunity for both of them. It’s not like one guy will play 60 and one will play 20. It’s going to work itself out. In this game, there are lots of injuries and a lot can happen. We now know that we have taken care of the position that we were worried about. We were one injury away from being in trouble. Now we know that we are very comfortable whichever way we go that we have two guys that can do the job and are both comfortable with that situation.

How the trade affects Jack Campbell’s immediate future:

Jack Campbell is still young and he needs to play lots of hockey. We don’t want him to be up here playing a backup role playing lots of hockey. He needs to stay down there and play around 60 games and see growth and become an NHL goalie. This is the best thing for him. We know we’ve got him there in case of an injury. The biggest thing is for Jack to be down in the minors playing lots of hockey and playing in lots of pressure situations.

If they are looking for an AHL backup or if Desrosiers may make the AHL jump:

We’re going to look at that situation. We decided that Desrosiers is better off somewhere playing 60 games in his first year pro. We’ll take a look at him here in developmental camp and see how he’s doing and where he is at. It’s a big jump from junior hockey to pro hockey. The bottom line is we want all of our young goalies playing, and so we’ll play that ear by ear and have it settled by September.

A little history lesson on Antti Niemi from Jim Nill:

When Antti Niemi was a free agent, it was between Chicago and Detroit in the free agency. So I have a good feeling about Antti and I know him well. We tried signing him as a free agent coming out of Finland, but in the end Chicago got him. But he’s been on my radar for a long time.

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If one goalie outdoes the other, isn’t it bad to have so much money invested in a 20-game goalie?:

First of all, I hope that happens because it would be a nice problem to have. The other thing is financially, we kind of set ourselves up. We had a game plan three years ago when I came here. We wanted to have $15-$20 million in cap room and we have that. Really the cap room has nothing to do with that. We wanted to be able to put the money where we needed to, so that doesn’t come into play at all. We are very comfortable where we sit financially.

Following up, is he comfortable with the defensemen currently under contract:

We are actually excited about our D. We have 11 guys that I know I can bring up to the NHL at any time. We have three guys in Austin that are on two-way contracts that are young guys that need to play. Then we have eight guys slotted up here for depth that all play NHL. Four of them are very young and are only going to get better.

We saw what [John] Klingberg has done. We saw what [Patrik] Nemeth did after his injury. [Jyrki] Jokipakka is making big strides with [Jamie] Oleksiak. We’ve got some great young defensemen, and then we’ve got the [Jason] Demers, [Alex] Goligoski, [Trevor] Daley, and [Jordie] Benn as our veteran presence. I’m very comfortable where we’re at. But we’re always trying to get better. I’d like to add another dimension if I could. I know in free agency it’s not going to happen, we scoured that. We’ll be open to making some trades. But if I start the season with what I have now, I would be very comfortable.

How Kari Lehtonen handled adding another number one goalie:

I talked to Kari at the end of the season and we talked about his career over the last four or five years. He really hasn’t had support. We’ve tried to get him support, but we haven’t done a great job at it. We went to a different scenario and he was very open to the idea. I know he was very comfortable going into it and he knew the way we would be heading. Like I said, I talked to both guys and they are both excited. The end game is that we want to win. They’re both excited to give us a chance to win and that’s what we are here for.

If the office will be quiet on the first day of free agency for the first time in a while:

I think the free agency period is slowly starting to change. We’ve all looked at the CBA and we’ve all analyzed it. The general manager is a pretty smart group. We’ve all seen what’s happened, and now we’re all signing our top players to 6-8 year contracts. There are two or three strong free agents out there, but it’s not as strong as it used to be and there’s 30 teams competing for those guys. So I don’t see July 1st being a big day for us. We’re going to be there and see where the market goes. If there’s something there that makes sense, we’ll definitely look into it. But from analyzing things and looking at it, I don’t think there’s something there that will be fit for us to start with. Maybe later on we’ll see what happens.

To expand on that question, over the last two years we’ve made a lot of changes. That being said, I believe we have to let some of that settle in also. We added [Tyler] Seguin the first year, and then we added Jason Spezza and Ales Hemsky. Then we have Klingberg, Nemeth, Jokipakka, Oleksiak come in. There’s been a lot of changes over the past two years. We like where we’re headed and we need to let it settle in. Last year we didn’t have [Valeri] Nichushkin and Nemeth for the season, and they’re big parts of our team. So we have to let a lot of it settle in and kind of form on it’s own.

Next: Dallas Stars Conference Call: Antti Niemi

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