Dallas Stars: Ranking Each Offseason Of Jim Nill Era

The NHL offseason is a time to improve and prepare for the season ahead, and Jim Nill knows how to get the job done. Here is each offseason ranked in his time with the Dallas Stars.

It was April 2013, and things looked bleak for Texas hockey. The Dallas Stars were closing out yet another failed season that ended without a postseason berth, making it five straight seasons without playoff hockey in Dallas.

The team just couldn’t seem to get it together. And when things aren’t working, it’s not the players on the ice that take the heat; it’s the front office and coaching staff.

And take the heat they did. Within hours of the Stars closing out their season with a 3-0 loss at home to the Detroit Red Wings, GM Joe Nieuwendyk was relieved of command.

He was replaced immediately by a bit of an unknown name: Red Wings assistant GM Jim Nill. It was a bold move to give someone like Nill the reins at such a critical point for the franchise, but considering the powerhouse that the Red Wings had been, there was plenty of faith.

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Fast forward four years and look at the Dallas Stars now. To say they are a completely new team would be a slight understatement. With each passing offseason, Nill has wasted no time in building up his roster, seeking out the best possible options in a given offseason and bringing a bright superstar class to Big D. In other words, he has put hockey back on the map in Dallas.

The results, oddly enough, have been mixed. Though Nill seems to take each offseason by the horns and get the most out of a chance at turning his roster into a contender, the Stars have only qualified for the playoffs in two of the four seasons with him at the helm.

But that doesn’t downplay the fact that he always seems to have the Dallas Stars in the spotlight during the summer months. Whether it’s a big signing or a blockbuster trade, Nill always finds a way to get the Stars involved.

With that, let’s take a look at each of Nill’s five off-seasons as general manager and rank them based on their overall strength.

5. The 2016 Offseason

Notable additions: D Dan Hamhuis, LW Lauri Korpikoski, LW Riley Tufte, RW Adam Cracknell, RW Jiri Hudler

Notable subtractions: D Alex Goligoski, D Jason Demers, D Kris Russell, C Vernon Fiddler, RW Colton Sceviour

It’s no secret that the Dallas Stars’ worst offseason in recent memory came last year. After all, just look at the season that followed it. The Stars sank from Central Division champions in 2015-16 to the fourth worst team in the Western Conference in 2016-17.

Dallas Stars

And a large reason for that was because of the implosion of the 15-16 team during the 2016 offseason.

At the beginning of the 2015 season, it seemed as though Dallas had finally found a fix (though it was a short-term one) for both their defense and goaltending. They added veteran names like Antti Niemi, Johnny Oduya, and Kris Russell over the course of the year, giving Dallas a steady group in the back end.

And then in 2016, it all dissolved. Goligoski was traded, Russell and Demers signed elsewhere, and   half of the starters on the blue line practically vanished overnight. They added Dan Hamhuis in free agency, and while the veteran defender played a consistent role, he couldn’t pick up the slack for the other missing pieces.

Losing Fiddler and Sceviour were two shots to the Stars’ offensive depth, but Cracknell helped fill that void. Korpikoski and Hudler made minor contributions but didn’t make any noteworthy steps in the right direction.

The young defense was extremely inconsistent and lackluster for a good majority of the season and could never seem to get it going. Mix that with the ugly duo of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi that Nill was unable to upgrade during the offseason, a couple of injuries, and a recession on offense and you get a 34-37-11 record with 79 points.

The best move of the 2016 offseason ended up signing Jamie Benn to an eight-year extension. While that was definitely a strong move for Dallas, it wasn’t enough. Moving on.

4. The 2014 Offseason

Notable additions: C Jason Spezza, RW Ales Hemsky, RW Patrick Eaves, D Julius Honka, G Anders Lindback

Notable subtractions: LW Ray Whitney, RW Alex Chiasson, G Tim Thomas

The 2016 offseason is the only instance throughout the Jim Nill era where the Dallas Stars did not make at least one blockbuster move.

With that being said, these final four off-seasons were kind of difficult to rank. But there are some underlying factors that make some better than others.

Editor In Leaf

The Stars didn’t lose a whole lot in the 2014 offseason but made some serious waves on the acquisition side of things. They traded for superstar center Jason Spezza, right wings Ales Hemsky and Patrick Eaves, and drafted a young defensive genius in Julius Honka.

But it wasn’t so much the strong additions they made on offense as much as it was the lack of help they added in the back end. The Stars stayed quiet in terms of adding defensive help during the offseason and paid for it dearly in the regular season. Dallas finished the season 26th in the league in terms of goals against per game and could not stay afloat most games.

In the crease, things were just as bad. Anders Lindback was signed on to be the next backup goaltender, but was traded away in early February after an ugly and short-lived career with the Stars. He never put together consistent starts, struggled on a regular basis, and left the majority of the work on Kari Lehtonen, who happened to turn in one of the worst seasons of his career.

The offense was greatly enhanced, finishing with the second highest goals for total in the NHL. That fact becomes even more shocking when you realize that even with the offensive firepower, the Stars still missed the playoffs by seven points. It’s a testament to just how inexperienced and unbalanced the Dallas blue line and crease was.

While Nill did a great job at strengthening up the offense and adding scoring power with Spezza, Hemsky and Eaves, he missed out on rounding out the team as a whole.

3. The 2013 Offseason

Notable additions: head coach Lindy Ruff, C Tyler Seguin, C Shawn Horcoff, RW Valeri Nichushkin, D Sergei Gonchar, G Dan Ellis

Notable subtractions: RW Reilly Smith, LW Loui Eriksson, LW Eric Nystrom, G Richard Bachman

Once again, this was an offseason that saw the Stars make a significant splash on the market and make the blockbuster deal of the summer throughout the NHL. That move was bringing in young superstar Tyler Seguin in a seven-player trade. Four years, later the trade is considered one of the worst in Boston Bruins’ history, but we won’t get into that right now.

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The Stars’ only sizable loss in Nill’s first offseason with the team was forward Loui Eriksson, but he was immediately replaced on offense with Jamie Benn, who was replaced by Seguin in the dot. In other words, Dallas came out better than when they entered.

But, like the 2014 offseason, the Dallas Stars did not successfully round out their entire roster. Instead, the Stars made some additions to stabilize themselves, but didn’t do enough to overpower the team.

Still, Dallas qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Nill’s first season in the chair, effectively breaking the five-year drought. Behind Lindy Ruff’s coaching scheme and new mechanics and a young and fresh lineup, the Stars managed to make it to the first round of the postseason before falling in six games.

It was a good beginning to Nill’s tenure and gave Stars fans plenty to look forward to down the road.

2. The 2015 Offseason

Notable additions: RW Patrick Sharp, RW Denis Gurianov, D Johnny Oduya, D Stephen Johns, G Antti Niemi

Notable subtractions: RW Ryan Garbutt, D Trevor Daley, G Jhonas Enroth

After the depressing 2014-15 season, many Stars fans were nervous that Dallas was slipping back into their former self. Nill had managed to make each offseason noteworthy up to that point, but all the Stars had to show for it was a wild card spot in 2014 and no playoffs in 2015. That’s not a lot when you secure Seguin and Spezza in back to back summers.

Pucks and Pitchforks

With the fear settling in, Nill knew he had to make something happen. He knew his team’s strengths and weaknesses, knew the holes that needed filling, and had a good idea on which players to target in the offseason.

He kicked off the acquisition phase a week before the free agency market opened when the Stars acquired Antti Niemi during the NHL Draft. This gave Dallas a veteran tandem to work with. And though it didn’t turn out to be the big fix they had hoped for, it was a viable and excellent alternative in the 2015-16 when Dallas finished first in the Western Conference and each goalie logged 25 wins.

Nill remained quiet on the first day of free agency, which gave Dallas Stars fans some nervous optimism. The goaltending issue had been addressed and the 2014-15 Stars team had played extremely well down the stretch near the end of the season. Was there any need for more changes?

Well, yes there was. Nill acquired Patrick Sharp and Stephen Johns from the Blackhawks and signed Johnny Oduya in free agency a few days later. They successfully bolstered their defense, overpowered their offense, and balanced their goaltending all in the 2015 offseason.

And that proved to be the saving grace they needed. The Dallas Stars were without a doubt the most exciting team to watch in the NHL in 2015-16 and fell one win short of the Western Conference Finals.

The question still lingers in regards to what that team might have done if Nill had been able to keep them together for 2016-17. The world will never know.