EDMONTON — As architect of a team playing in its third straight conference final, Jim Nill chuckles when asked if he saw any of it coming.
“No, no, there were too many unknowns,” said the humble 67-year-old Hanna, Alta., product during a quiet sit-down at Rogers Place.
“If you asked me coming out of the bubble here in Edmonton during COVID, I was worried where we were going. It was Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin’s team, and they were getting into their 30s, starting to age out.”
After losing to Tampa in the 2020 Stanley Cup Final, a rebuild seemed inevitable.
“We’re in a different market down in Dallas, and rebuilds are tough, so I’m sitting there, hoping I wouldn’t have to go to that route and that there was another way to do it,” he said.
“Then, all of sudden, these players showed up, so it didn’t become an option.”
In a league in which conventional wisdom suggests teams almost always need to go through several lean years to aid a reboot, the Stars have been a model of consistency based on their ability to draft better than most teams the last dozen years.
“Our scouting and development team did a good job and suddenly we hit on a couple big drafts,” said Nill.
“Guys like Roope Hintz (49th in 2015) and Esa Lindell (74th in 2012), were all coming up through the farm system, so the combination of that and another big draft where guys hit well kind of put us to the next level again. So instead of taking that dip, we were able to stay pretty consistent.”
The big splash he refers to came in 2017 when the Stars snagged Miro Heiskanen third overall, Jake Oettinger 26th and Jason Robertson 39th. Thomas Harley was selected 18th overall in 2019, but the organization went into the bubble tourney still unsure just how impactful each of them would be.
It was only clear a few years later they would be franchise cornerstones.
“Then all of a sudden we draft Wyatt Johnston,” said Nill of his club’s 23rd pick in 2021, which was somewhat risky given Johnston’s draft-year season in the OHL was wiped out by the pandemic.
“Most kids when you draft them, you’re thinking it’s a three-to-five year process, and you wonder who they are going to become when they do get there.
“Well, he’s come in and been a star right from the start. Logan Stankoven (47th in 2021) and Mavrik Bourque (30th in 2022) were also just coming in to start their careers, so we had a bunch of those kind of players.”
Johnston stepped in as a 19-year-old and has eclipsed the 100-goal mark in his first three years in the bigs, giving the team depth up the middle few teams can match.
Nill used Stankoven to help land Mikko Rantanen in one of the biggest sign-and-trade deadline deals in league lore.
Rantanen almost single-handedly willed his team past his former club in Colorado in the opening round, making Nill look like a genius once again.
No wonder he’s the two-time defending GM of the year, and a finalist for the award again this season.
“I’m humbled,” said Nill, a five-time finalist who is up against Winnipeg’s Kevin Cheveldayoff and Florida’s Bill Zito.
“There’s a lot of good, good people in this industry that are just as worthy.”
What he’s assembled is a deep team that has a combination of high-end youngsters learning the ropes from esteemed veterans, providing a successful roster blend that made Dallas the third-leading scoring team this season.
“We had kind of three tiers, with the older guys like Benn, Seguin, Joe Pavelski and Ryan Suter who helped guys in their prime right now like Heiskanen, and they’re all passing it on to Wyatt Johnston, Thomas Harley, Mavrik Bourque and Logan Stankoven,” said Nill, a four-time Stanley Cup winner as an executive in Detroit, who has been the GM in Dallas since 2013.
“That’s the kind of blend you want.”
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They’ve become a force, knocking on the door in three straight conference finals, hoping to eventually break through.
His team now down 3-1 to the Oilers following Tuesday’s 4-1 loss, Nill believes the process of learning from late spring heartache is valuable in chasing the ultimate goal.
“You don’t go from building a team and starting the playoffs to just going to win the cup,” said Nill.
“There are too many things that happen, too many highs and lows. You know, we’re living it here. We’ve been there three years now, and we’re still living it.
“You win a game and you think, ‘Boy, if we keep playing like this we’re gonna make it.’ Next game you get spanked and you’re like, ‘Can we get it back again?’ You have to go through all that to realize that’s what makes the Stanley Cup Playoffs so great and so hard to win.”
