The Dallas Stars surprised many across the hockey world with a run to the Western Conference Finals last season, falling to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights in six games.
Nearly reaching the pinnacle of the sport has increased expectations on the squad, and general manager Jim Nill and head coach Pete DeBoer approached the offseason with one goal: get to the Stanley Cup Finals and win the whole thing.
“To win the Stanley Cup is a process, and I think we’re going through that,” Nill said as he met with the media on Wednesday morning. “The next step is getting to the Finals and hopefully winning. I think we have the team to do that, but we’ve got to go through it. That’s the message [of] this training camp because we have to be ready to go, and nothing is given. You’ve got to earn it. The next step is the biggest step.”
The Stars hired Nill from Detroit as their general manager in 2013. Since then, the team has made six playoff appearances and reached one Stanley Cup Final. During his tenure in Detroit, the Red Wings won four Stanley Cups and made the playoffs each year, a streak that eventually reached 25 consecutive seasons. Now, he is modeling the Stars after the shape he gave his former team, mixing veterans and young players while adding depth across the board and embracing the difficult experiences.
“I love the things Jim did over the summer,” Coach DeBoer told the media on Wednesday. “You give us some more depth and skill and resources, and I’m excited about the young guys — both the guys that have an opportunity to take a step and help us also getting a good look at some of the guys knocking on the door.”
“There’s a lot of talent here,” DeBoer continued. “Jim [Nill], with his background in scouting and development going back to Detroit, is always leaning towards patience and taking the right steps in doing it.”
The Stars signed forwards Matt Duchene, Craig Smith, and Sam Steel through free agency this offseason and brought back forward Ty Dellandrea and defenseman Joel Hanley as part of a flurry of moves. Now, under a month from the start of the regular season, Nill believes he has built his deepest roster.
“I think depthwise, skillwise, and experiencewise, we’re as good as we’ve ever been,” he remarked. “I think we’ve got a good mix of the veterans and the mix of the guys kind of starting to hit the peak of their careers, and the young guys pushing.”
After last season ended, DeBoer took some time off before diving back into things. The break allowed him to clear his head and see the positives from the season.
“I think, when you lose, especially the way Game 6 went, you have to get away from it for a little bit and take a 10,000-foot view as opposed to being right in the middle of it,” he explained. “When you do that, you realize there was a lot of things we did really well to get to that point and that we want to keep and build on, but there’s always areas to improve.”
The Stars last reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2020, losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games. As difficult as it was to go through, Nill believes it was necessary to get the team where it wants to go.
“To get that close and you didn’t win, you learn from that,” Nill explained. “People don’t like to hear it, but you have to get a little lucky. … Guys have to gain experience. They have to understand how hard it is, and you don’t go from a rebuilding team to a Stanley Cup champion overnight. It’s a process. You’ve got to go through it, and it has its highs and lows.”
That’s exactly what happened when Nill was in Detroit. The year he joined the Red Wings, they lost in the Stanley Cup Final, and they followed it with a Conference Final loss a year later. However, they broke through with a Stanley Cup championship in the third year and remained a perennial contender for the next decade-plus.
The Stars hope to follow the same path, and Nill and the front office are determined to get them there.
“We haven’t done anything,” Nill said. “We’ve got great years, but we haven’t won the Cup. I think that’s what drives us is we’re all here for us to win the Cup, and we’re striving to get there. We know we haven’t reached that, and that’s what’s exciting for this season.”
The Stars open the 2023-24 season against the Saint Louis Blues at 7 p.m. CT at the American Airlines Center on Thursday, October 12.
