Nill has Stars’ window wide open, in line for another GM of the Year Award
The 66-year-old won’t take credit for it, but he’s put together a mix that could see him win the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award for the third straight season.
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MANALAPAN, Fla. — “We’re going to be around for a while.”
Those are the words Jim Nill uses to describe the window extended for the Dallas Stars the minute he acquired Mikko Rantanen from the Carolina Hurricanes and coupled his eight-year, $96-million contract settlement with a five-year, $42-million extension for Wyatt Johnston.
Rantanen is 28, Johnston is 21, and one look at the players they’re surrounded by gives you an idea of what Nill’s talking about.
“The window’s pretty wide open,” he says on Tuesday afternoon, after the second of three general manager meetings wraps at the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa.
It was already ajar, but Nill had no idea in February to what extent it could be pushed to its limit come March.
“Never saw this coming,” he says of the deadline deal that shook the hockey world. “If you’d have told me two years ago, or two months ago, I never would’ve thought we’d have done what we’ve done. I didn’t know it was even going to happen until two hours before the trade deadline. Getting a marquee player like that for both now and the future just doesn’t happen. That’s how precarious these things are. So many different variables that go into it. It’s a big moment for our franchise.”
Making it all but guaranteed there will be many more in the years to come.
Look at the composition of this Stars roster.
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“We’ve got a good mix of veteran guys who have gone through it — Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Matt Duchene, Mikael Granlund,” Nill said. “We’ve got a group of core of guys really in their prime right now — Roope Hintz, Jake Oettinger, Jason Robertson, Miro Heiskanen. And then we’ve got a group of young kids coming up like Mavrik Bourque, Wyatt Johnston. Guys that are just getting their feet wet in Lian Bischel. We’ve got a real good mix.”
The 66-year-old won’t take credit for it, but he’s put together a mix that could see him win the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award for the third straight season.
Nill cleared Radek Faksa’s $ 3.25 million salary off the Stars’ books by trading him to St. Louis on July 2. That was a day after he signed Ilya Lybushkin to a three-year deal worth $9.75 million, Matt Dumba to a two-year, $7.5-million contract, and extended Duchene, Nils Lundqvist, Sam Steel and Thomas Harley on July 1. He held his ground before Seguin was forced to the sidelines for hip surgery and Heiskanen was lost to a knee injury, and then he pounced on Feb. 1, acquiring Mikael Granlund and Cody Ceci from the Sharks for a first- and a third-round pick in 2025.
“In my mind, I thought that was probably our trade and that would be it for the playoff run and for the deadline,” Nill said.
Roughly three weeks later, Carolina GM Eric Tulsky called to notify Nill the Stars were one of a handful of teams Rantanen might consider signing with, as it was becoming clearer and clearer he wasn’t going to sign with the Hurricanes after they traded a package centred on Martin Necas to acquire him from the Colorado Avalanche.
“We heard we might have that potential, but we didn’t know where it was going to go,” Nill said. “We didn’t know what the assets would be, if we could sign him ourselves and fit him under our cap, so that’s when we started digging in.”
The challenge would be to give Carolina what they were looking for without obstructing the Stars’ chances of winning now.
Nill knew a player like Logan Stankoven would have to be a part of it, but the objective was to not deplete his roster further while adding Rantanen to it.
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When he found out just two hours before the deadline that his package of Stankoven, two conditional firsts (2026 and 2028) and two thirds (2026, 2027) was the one the Hurricanes were willing to accept, only then was he permitted to negotiate with Rantanen’s agent, Andy Scott.
Nill says he was talking to Scott about Johnston dating back to October. Those talks resumed over the 4 Nations Face-Off break, and after completing the deal with Rantanen on Mar. 7, they intensified.
From there, Johnston, who has 80 goals and 167 points in 230 regular-season games but proved up his worth considerably in accumulating 14 goals and 22 points over back-to-back 19-game playoff runs, was locked into a deal likely to age well when also taking the rising salary cap into account.
“That helped solidify our foundation,” said Nill.
Seguin and Heiskanen returning to health for the playoffs fortifies it further.
Add in the experience the team has gotten over the past two years, and the potential for it to win an incredibly fierce competition in the Western Conference en route to perhaps bringing the Stanley Cup back to Dallas for the first time since 1999 is real.
“The experience hardens you,” Nill says. “You understand what it takes, understand the highs and lows, know there’s going to be situations that won’t all be good times. But you’ve been through struggles and learned how to fight through them. Our team’s been hardened that way.”
If it doesn’t win now, it’ll gain more experience and hardening that will give it multiple opportunities to win.
The experience gained right now is also proving valuable for a group that went through dramatic change and is looking to completely mesh ahead of the playoffs.
Rantanen has two goals and four points since joining. And though the Stars have gone 1-2-1 since his arrival, they’ve already had the chance to try him in different spots, which is beneficial.
“We want to get him settled in and the coaches are looking at different things,” said Nill. “With Roope getting hurt that first game, Wyatt stepped in, so we saw some connection there. Roope has come back, so they’ll give them some time together. He’s come in and looked like himself, and that’s important.”
What’s most important is the superstar is there for the long haul, and that he’s surrounded by several countrymen and a core group of players that will keep the Stars in Stanley Cup contention for years to come.
