Dallas Stars: Ranking Each Of Jim Nill’s Five Stars Teams

5. The 2016-17 Dallas Stars

There probably isn’t much of an argument that the 2016-17 Dallas Stars were the worst team in Nill’s era. Not only that, but they ended up being one of the worst teams in Stars history.

Record: 34-37-11 (79 points)

Finished: 6th in Central Division, 11th in Western Conference

Made playoffs/missed playoffs by: Missed by 15 points

This was a lost season for Dallas from the word “go.”

After building up plenty of excitement and hype with a Central Division title and falling one win short of the Western Conference Finals in 2016, the Dallas Stars looked to be on the come up. Years of mediocrity and playing in the middle of the pack had finally subsided and Dallas was on top for once. They had built something threatening and dangerous and were using it to its maximum potential.

Dallas Stars

And then, it all seemed to disappear overnight. Losing starting defenders Alex Goligoski, Jason Demers, and Kris Russell over the summer and replacing them with only veteran Dan Hamhuis wasn’t an ideal start. In addition, leaving their goaltending untouched after it proved to be their primary undoing in the playoffs the year before was another.

But injuries also played a large part in the Stars dropping to the bottom of the standings in 2016-17. Names like Jason Spezza, Ales Hemsky, Mattias Janmark, Johnny Oduya, Patrick Sharp, and Cody Eakin all missed significant parts of the regular season, leaving Dallas constantly filling holes.

As a result, their offense dropped from 3.23 goals per game to  2.71 in one season. Their goals against average hiked up from 2.78 per game to 3.17 per game. That’s the worst possible turnaround to have in a one-season span.

On top of that, the Stars leaned on unproven or young rookie talent to try and help them get back in the race. Names like Adam Cracknell, Lauri Korpikoski, Devin Shore, and Cody Eakin were given large roles on the offensive side of the puck. On defense, rookie Esa Lindell was thrust into a first-pairing role while Jamie Oleksiak and Stephen Johns were put in pivotal positions when their games clearly weren’t at the peak.

All of this combined together to make an ugly concoction and left the Stars flailing. Lindy Ruff’s high risk system handcuffed the young defense and set the blue line up to fail. The offense could not find the same consistency that they had in the season prior. And finally, Antti Niemi and Kari Lehtonen both had career-low years. The power play was average and the penalty kill was the worst in the league by a long shot.

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By the time it was all said and done, the Stars had traded away plenty of expiring free agents and parted ways with head coach Lindy Ruff.

The 2016-17 season left the Dallas Stars in a rut and brought their future into question. Was this team really in good shape for the future?

It wasn’t all bad, though. Following the disastrous year, Dallas won the third overall pick in the draft via the lottery and picked up defenseman Miro Heiskanen, who looks to be a cornerstone for the blue line for years to come. In the offseason, they also secured valuable pieces like Ben Bishop and Alexander Radulov.

But other than that, the 2016-17 season was an absolute mess. It was the worst year of Nill’s tenure as general manager and had many questioning his overall qualification to be GM. Crazy what one year can do, huh?

4. The 2014-15 Dallas Stars

Here’s another installment in the category of “go in with high expectations that are quickly crushed.” The 2014-15 Dallas Stars started their year with a lot of promise but finished it up with game 82.

Record: 41-31-10 (92 points)

Finished: 6th in Central Division, 10th in Western Conference

Made playoffs/missed playoffs by: Missed by five points

It was May 2014. The Stars had just been knocked out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and yet, somehow, the franchise was riding a wave of excitement. Though their playoff run had fallen much too short, they were simply happy to have been there.

It was the first time in five seasons that the Stars had tasted postseason action, and both the team and their fans were quite happy to have had the opportunity. Lindy Ruff had led a ragtag group with a balanced mixture of veteran talent and youthful speed to a playoff spot. At that point, anything seemed possible and Nill looked like a genius in his first year as GM. But now they knew that they were good enough to get there, so the challenge to build another competitor began.

Nill wasted no time in aiming to land some big fishes in preparation for the 2014-15 season. And on July 1, it all went down. Nill traded for veteran center Jason Spezza and signed Ales Hemsky and Patrick Eaves to bolster the offense. The Stars quickly looked to be early favorites to not only get into the playoffs, but also compete for a Cup.

But Nill forgot about one thing: his defense. After a year of trusting a somewhat shaky defensive group, the Stars fell victim to collapsing from within on their blue line. Instead of adding a veteran during free agency, Dallas trusted their young guns. That turned out to be a bad move.

While the rise of John Klingberg‘s stardom began in Nov. 2014 and they dealt Brenden Dillon for Jason Demers in an effort to balance out their handedness, the defense simply could not keep up. Jordie Benn had a catastrophic season, there was no consistency in the Stars’ bottom pairing, and none of their young players stepped up besides Klingberg.

Dallas finished 26th in the NHL in goals against at 3.13 per game. However, their offense turned out to be the second best in the league with 3.13 goals per game. In other words, their horrible defense leveled out their spectacular offense.

The Stars were eliminated with a week to go in the regular season and rattled off four straight wins to close out the year. That included a 4-1 win over Nashville in game 82 that also saw Jamie Benn clinch the franchise’s first Art Ross Trophy.

There were some bright spots in the Stars’ 2014-15 campaign, but two separate six-game losing streaks and a few losses were Dallas gave up 5+ goals were too glaring to let the team pass on. The high expectations were not met and the Stars could not answer the bell as the NHL passed them up.

It was a disappointing season that followed a season filled with hope. And with that, Nill endured another offseason of significant change.

3. The 2013-14 Dallas Stars

You may not agree with this team being behind another certain team (*cough* 2017-18 *cough*), but let me explain. And on top of that, don’t let it diminish all that this team did. After all, this was the team that started it all.

Record: 40-31-11 (91 points)

Finished: 5th in Central Division, 8th in Western Conference

Made playoffs/missed playoffs by: Made playoffs

If the 2013-14 Dallas Stars were known for one thing, it was being resilient and beating the odds.

The 2013-14 season was a season filled with firsts for the Stars. It was the first season for Jim Nill as GM and the first season for Lindy Ruff to serve as head coach. Jamie Benn also entered his first season as captain of the Stars and the Stars donned Victory Green and their new logo for the very first time.

And to cap it all off, they somehow found their way into the playoffs.

They definitely didn’t have the build of a playoff team, though, and that’s why I have them at no. 3.

To put things in perspective, take a look at what the Stars’ lineup looked like towards the end of the season.

Jamie Benn – Tyler Seguin – Valeri Nichushkin

Erik Cole – Rich Peverley – Alex Chiasson/Ray Whitney

Antoine Roussel – Cody Eakin – Ryan Garbutt

Shawn Horcoff – Vernon Fiddler – Colton Sceviour

Alex Goligoski – Trevor Daley

Jordie Benn – Brenden Dillon

Patrik Nemeth – Sergei Gonchar

Isn’t that a sight to behold?

The 2013-14 Dallas Stars quickly turned into a “flash in the pan” team. Five of the forwards listed above have retired since the end of the 13-14 season, one went to Russia, and the Stars either traded, exposed, or neglected to re-sign four others. If you do the math, that leaves Benn, Seguin, and Roussel as the only players still remaining. On defense, there isn’t a single player still on the Stars roster. That’s shocking considering it was only four seasons ago.

That’s because this Stars team wasn’t built as a contender. They were built as a first step in a remodel and just happened to scrap together enough points for a playoff run. It’s not like they didn’t have some help, though.

Pucks and Pitchforks

Dallas finished the year as the eight seed but capped off their season on an 8-8-0 run. That’s not typically a stretch that will get you into the playoffs.

The reason they worked their way into the postseason was largely due to the fact that Arizona, the only other team in contention with Dallas for the eighth seed, suffered a colossal meltdown. Mike Smith went down with an injury in mid-March and left the Coyotes to finish the year on a 3-5-4 note in his absence.

With that, the Stars still had to battle it out and didn’t clinch a spot until game 81. They were tenth in the league in goals for and 14th in goals against. In other words, they were a pretty average team.

And when Cody Eakin, Ryan Garbutt, Alex Chiasson, and Ray Whitney make up half of your top eight point producers, it’s hard to go very far.

But still, Nill’s first season in Dallas was considered a success and built plenty of hype and hope for the future. It was a successful first step, and helped usher in a new era of expectations that the new GM now must live up to.

2. The 2017-18 Dallas Stars

Now, you may completely disagree with me on putting the most recent Dallas Stars squad at no. 2 of Nill’s tenure. And if you do, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But let me lay the groundwork as to why the 2017-18 Stars were a good team that endured a tidal wave of misfortune at the worst time possible.

Record: 42-32-8 (92 points)

Finished: 6th in Central Division, 10th in Western Conference

Made playoffs/missed playoffs by: Missed playoffs by three points

The 2017-18 Dallas Stars are probably still fresh on your minds. So there probably isn’t any reason for me to go too in-depth in an attempt to refresh you. But let’s unpack the season a little bit for old time’s sake.

This year’s Stars team taught us a lot. They taught us that there is a way for a team to start on an average note, but transform into a potential Cup contender through the middle of the season, and finally hit a major slump as the season closes out and barely miss the postseason.

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But the key behind this team isn’t how they collapsed. Instead, it’s the level of talent that they possessed. After all, this team looked like a surefire playoff competitor and Cup contender in early February.

After the 2016-17 season, Jim Nill knew that he had a lot to fix and little time to spare. Stars fans had grown weary of Nill making big offseason splashes and the team still going nowhere and needed results.

Those results were not present in the 79-point performance in 2016-17, so Nill was in a pressured situation. But as he always does, he worked his way out of it with another storybook offseason.

In early April, he hired veteran head coach Ken Hitchcock to be the Stars’ new bench boss and hopefully restore a winning culture through balance and effort. One month later, he secured an elite starting goaltender by trading for Ben Bishop. And over the final months, he traded for Marc Methot, drafted a franchise defender in Miro Heiskanen, and signed Tyler Pitlick and Alexander Radulov.

Nill did everything he possibly could to rebuild the team in one offseason and return them to a playoff-caliber squad.

And for a significant portion of the season, this team looked as though they had a playoff psh in them. Hitchcock is a demanding coach and asked a lot of the group, but they bought in after the first 20 games and really took off around Thanksgiving.

Blackhawk Up

But the wheels came off when a few things went down. First, the Stars’ depth scoring cut off entirely. No one outside the top line seemed to contribute for four weeks near the end of the year. Secondly, Hitchcock stopped trusting certain players and minimized his roster. This led to frustration and an inability for the players to get the job done. The majority of his team folded on him, leaving 5-7 players to do the heavy lifting in the final 20 games.

Then, Bishop went down with an injury and Kari Lehtonen could not successfully shift back into the role of full-time starter. From there, the team collapsed on itself. Dallas lost eight games in a row in the middle of March and slipped from third place in the Central Division to outside the playoff picture entirely. The Stars were eliminated from the playoff race on April 1.

As a result, Ken Hitchcock retired, leaving the Stars with one more hole to fill.

Even with the late-season collapse and a second straight season with no postseason action, this team still carried a lot of potential. That much is clear.

Seguin hit the 40-goal mark for the first time in his career and really blossomed into a true and multifaceted no. 1 center. Radulov hit new career highs in his first season with the team and reached an impressive 72 points. The captain led the team with 79 points and finished the season with two hat tricks in three games.

And to top it all off, the defense was seventh in the NHL in goals against and posted some of its best numbers in years. Led by a primarily young cast consisting of Klingberg, Lindell, Johns, and Greg Pateryn along with veterans Marc Methot and Dan Hamhuis, the Dallas blue line looked whole for the first time in a while.

This team built on a lot of their potential and opened the door for future aspirations. It’s still baffling that they found a way to let their hopes disintegrate in a stacked Western Conference in the final month of the season, but sometimes you have to step back before stepping forward.

The 2017-18 Dallas Stars didn’t turn out the way people expected them to due to a few internal hiccups, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that their roster was and is still loaded. This was definitely a successful build on Nill’s part, regardless of how the coaching staff handled the components.

1. The 2015-16 Dallas Stars

Let’s end this mega slideshow on a happy note, shall we? Coming in as the no. 1 team in Jim Nill’s tenure as GM, let’s talk about the 2015-16 Dallas Stars.

Record: 50-23-9 (109 points)

Finished: 1st in Central Division, 1st in Western Conference

Made playoffs/missed playoffs by: Made playoffs

Wow. What a team this was.

Backtrack really quickly to June 2015. The Stars were two months removed from missing the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs and falling well short of expectations (see “The 2014-15 Dallas Stars” for further clarification). On top of that, they had a to-do list that had to be checked off before they could be considered a true contender.

At the top of that list included finding a competent and reliable backup goaltender and adding a veteran presence on the blue line. In a little under three weeks time, Nill found a way to do all of that and then some.

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He secured Antti Niemi in a trade and signed veteran defender Johnny Oduya to an affordable two-year deal. But on top of that, he also traded for Patrick Sharp and Stephen Johns. The acquisition of Sharp injected more life and power into an already dangerous offensive force. And from there, the rest is history.

The Dallas Stars took the NHL by storm. They won 17 of their first 21 games in the regular season and were the best team in the NHL for a good two months before the red-hot Washington Capitals stole the title.

Dallas was the best offensive team in the NHL by a significant gap, scoring 3.23 goals per game. Their top trio of Benn, Seguin, and Sharp abused and humiliated opposing defenses while their depth forwards provided a helpful punch in the bottom nine. In the back end, their defense played a successful enough two-way game and their two goalies built off of each other enough to get Dallas into the playoffs as the top seed.

They owned a top-ten unit on both the power play and penalty kill and looked to be one of the top challengers for the Cup.

And after handling the Minnesota Wild in six games in the first round, the Stars stared down their eventual spoiler in the St. Louis Blues. Though they endured a high-spirited and incredibly entertaining second round series, the Blues found a way to outlast the Stars in the deciding game seven and crushed months of aspirations and hopes.

While the Dallas Stars had no idea the misfortunes they were in for in the 2016-17 campaign, the 2015-16 season was quite a sight to behold. Nill found a combination that clicked incredibly well and gave the Stars and their franchise a shot at something big. I still sit back at times and wonder what would have happened had that exact same team had one more swing at a title in the following season.

But here we are in the 2018 offseason, and it’s been quite the journey so far. Though the lack of success is becoming concerning and discouraging considering the talent the team possesses, Jim Nill has had no trouble in building entertaining hockey teams and reviving the hockey culture in Dallas.

Next: Surging Central Division Is Leaving Stars Behind

The Dallas Stars have another busy summer ahead, and it all starts with Nill. And after five years at the helm, there’s only one question on everyone’s minds.

What will Nill do next?