Catching up with Stars GM Jim Nill: Unfinished business, injury updates, playoff format and more

TORONTO — Sitting down for an interview with Dallas Stars general manager Jim Nill early this week, the surroundings were hard to ignore.

Just over two weeks since the Toronto Maple Leafs announced to the world they had a GM opening, Nill settled into a seat in the bowels of Scotiabank Arena as his team prepared to play the Leafs.

It was not a coincidence in any way that the day after Brad Treliving was fired as Leafs GM — with the so-called center of the hockey universe filling social media and airwaves with potential replacements — the Stars dropped the news that Nill had signed a two-year extension to stay in Dallas.

“Our owner, Tom Gaglardi, and I started discussions actually last summer about my extension,” Nill told The Athletic on Monday. “We both got busy. We would talk about it. … To tell you the truth, I wasn’t too worried about it. I’ve got a great situation there in Dallas. We have great ownership. We’ve got a good team. My family loves Dallas. So, it was never going to be an issue.

“We finally got it finished off. We agreed to it around March. We just didn’t announce it.”

But then the Leafs made their news, and, well, Nill is the three-time reigning Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award winner. Of course he would be a popular name.

“The Toronto thing popped up, and my owner said, ‘I think we should get it out there,’ and put it to rest,” Nill said with a chuckle. “So we did.”

The reality was that Nill was never going anywhere. And he was the one who didn’t feel the need to announce the extension back in early March, because he wanted the focus on the team. The white noise out of Toronto obviously changed that.

“There was really no doubt that I was coming back to Dallas,” said the Hanna, Alberta, native.

There’s unfinished business with the Stars, who have gone to three straight Western Conference finals and have a core that’s many years from aging out. They’re always in the thick of it, but they await that final step. That’s reason enough for Nill to want to see it through.

“We haven’t finished what we’re doing,” Nill said. “And again, I have a great situation. … We have great ownership (and) they’ve given me carte blanche whenever we did to do something. They fully support me.”

The stability he has in Dallas is hard to find in today’s NHL, too. Not many GMs can say they’ve signed four contracts with the same organization.

“For well over a decade, Jim and I have been able to develop a lot of trust and understanding,” Gaglardi told The Athletic this week. “His track record as a general manager speaks for itself. I’m proud of the job that he’s done. He’s built the Stars into a perennial contender, and that made it really easy when it came time to get his recent extension done.”

Stability seems to follow Nill around. His 13 seasons as Dallas GM followed two decades in the Detroit Red Wings organization, most of them as assistant GM to Ken Holland.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate in this business,” Nill said.

During his later years in Detroit, a long list of teams tried to pry Nill away, but it wasn’t until 2013 that he took that route. He wasn’t in a hurry.

“I was in a good situation,” Nill said. “I had some chances to go, but looking back, whether you want to call this wisdom for people moving forward, it was probably good I didn’t take or get those situations (GM opportunities). I might not be where I am today. I might have bounced around.

“I look back now, you always think you’re ready, but I wasn’t ready,’’ added Nill, a former winger who played nine NHL seasons in the ’80s, with stops in St. Louis, Vancouver, Boston, Winnipeg and Detroit.

So many first-time GMs get fired and have a hard time getting a second chance. Nill had no reason to rush out of Hockeytown. He enjoyed his work there, the team was a perennial contender — winning four Stanley Cup championships while he was there — and he was one of the highest-paid assistant GMs in the league.

That same patience he showed in waiting for his GM chance has been prevalent in how he’s built and rebuilt a few versions of contenders in Dallas, where the organization drafts and develops as well as any organization. Nill isn’t one to overreact or succumb to emotion.

“That’s what makes this organization so good for so many years,” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said this week. “It’s steady and calm. He’s got that experience where he’s not saying 100 things every day, but when he says stuff, it has meaning, and it has merit, and it’s coming first from a really good place and a really experienced place.

“The biggest thing for me coming back to Dallas after all this time is just it’s a major league organization now with Tom and Jim. It’s just steadily run.”

Funny how things work out sometimes in the NHL. One of the first things Nill did after being hired in 2013 was fire a young first-time NHL coach in Gulutzan. His deal was up at the time. Then, 12 years later, Nill brought him back after the decision to fire Peter DeBoer following last year’s Western Conference final.

“I don’t think he gets enough credit,” Nill said of Gulutzan. “He’s done a great job. He’s given some younger guys opportunities that a lot of other coaches wouldn’t. He’s been patient. Somebody makes a mistake, they’re not getting pinned to the bench. They’re right back at it. He’s given guys a lot of belief and opportunity.”

One of the appeals Gulutzan carried was the rapport he had with top players in Edmonton as an assistant coach.

“That came into play a lot,” Nill said. “I did my research. I knew him a little bit. A lot of our staff knew him a lot. When those stories came up (about Gulutzan’s rapport with top stars in Edmonton), people weren’t surprised. They know who he is as a person. And I think he’s kind of a new breed of coach.

“You see Spencer Carbery in Washington, Dan Muse in Pittsburgh, it’s a different generation of player now, and these guys know how to handle them.”

So, it’s that time of year. Yet again for Dallas, there’s no easing into the Stanley Cup playoffs. It’s a banger right out of the gates. The Stars had a seven-game series with defending Cup champion Vegas in 2024, then a drama-filled seven-gamer in the “Mikko Rantanen Bowl” versus Colorado last year, and now here comes Quinn Hughes and the Cup-contending Wild in the first round.

But you won’t catch Nill complaining. That’s life.

“You want to win the Cup? It’s hard,” the Stars GM said.

The final-worthy first-round matchup has renewed the playoff format debate, though, for many around the hockey world. But Nill wasn’t biting.

“With the parity now, be careful what you wish for,” Nill said. “The No. 7 and No. 8 seeds are pretty good.”

So he’s pretty Zen about it all. Here come the Wild.

“It’s going to be a great series,” Nill said. “Two good teams — very equal teams.”

Will the Stars be healthy enough?

“Part of the game,” Nill said, shrugging and refusing to find any excuses. “That’s what impressed me this year about the team, the resiliency that we’ve had. From Day 1, we’ve been hurt. We lost Jamie Benn in training camp. We lost Matt Duchene. We lost Thomas Harley for six weeks. We lost Tyler Seguin for the year. We lost Lian Bichsel for two months. We lost (Nils) Lundkvist for two months. We’ve been battling this all year.

“Then we come out of the Olympics and lose three guys: Rantanen, Hintz and Faksa. But, we’re finding ways. And the young guys have really stepped up.”

A year ago, the Stars outlasted the Avs in that seven-game series without injured stars Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson, which is still amazing.

Rantanen came back to the lineup March 28, which was huge, but the health of Hintz remains in question, and there’s no assurance he will be available in the first round. That’s a big one. On the flip side, No. 1 defenseman Miro Heiskanen (lower body) should be back.

“We think he’s going to be available to start the playoffs,” Nill said.

So here we go, another playoff journey is upon Nill and the Stars. He turned 68 over the weekend and has lots of juice left in the tank, but the two-year extension is reflective of that stage in his life and career. His wife, Bekki, is an amazing woman who fought cancer twice.

Life isn’t just about hockey.

“That’s why the last couple of contracts have been for two years,” said Nill. “Because I don’t want to tie the hands of the team, I’ve been around long enough, and I respect our organization, so two years is fine with me. Family is a big factor. I’ve got grandkids now.

“We’ll decide in a year and a half what the next step is.”

Nill paused before adding: “I’m fortunate. This game’s been very good to me.”