DALLAS — Leaning back in a comfortable heather-gray armchair in his modest office in Frisco, Texas, with his legs crossed, Dallas Stars general manager Jim Nill pounded on his chest with his right fist, hammering away at an imaginary crest across an imaginary jersey.

“Your first trade is devastating,” he said. “That logo’s implanted in you. You’ve been drafted by them and developed by them. Then all of a sudden, you’re traded. It’s devastating. I’ve been there myself.”

Nill was 23 years old when the St. Louis Blues traded him to Vancouver, just one year removed from his NHL debut and two years removed from playing for Team Canada in the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid. Nill was traded three more times in his career — to Boston, then to Winnipeg, then to Detroit. But that first one lingered with him. Even though he had only been in St. Louis for a year. Even though he was a sixth-round draft pick, not some hot-shot prospect. Even though he wasn’t a star, wasn’t a stalwart, never was a part of the Blues’ fabric.

It still hurt.

So Nill could only imagine what this season was like for Mikko Rantanen — a top-10 pick, a 10-year veteran, a jersey just waiting to be hung in the Ball Arena rafters and a plaque just waiting to be hung in the Hockey Hall of Fame — to be ripped away from his hockey home in Denver and sent across the country to Carolina without warning.

Then to be traded again six weeks later.

“That’s hard,” Nill said. “That’s tough on a player. But he’s handled it like a pro. His professionalism is off the charts. I just love his demeanor, his leadership. Only being here two months, you can already see it — his competitiveness to win, his focus, his preparation. He’s a pro player.”

He’s not just a pro, he’s a superstar, a truly elite, top-10 player in the world. And for all the talk about Dallas’ incredible depth and the perennial contender Nill has built over the years, that was the one thing the Stars were missing. They were loaded with very good forwards. They didn’t have a great one.

Now they do. And it might go down as Nill’s biggest and best move in a standout career as a GM.

“You don’t find players like Mikko Rantanen,” Nill said. “That just doesn’t happen. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can be in the game another 20 years and may never have this opportunity again. You just don’t have the opportunity to get those guys very often. Worked out well for us.”

Nill had known of Rantanen for more than a decade, dating to the run-up to the 2015 NHL Draft. The Stars had the 12th pick that year, and Rantanen went 10th to Colorado, so he was very much on Nill’s radar. He then watched with an interested eye as Rantanen “tore up the American League,” in Nill’s words, for the Texas Stars’ in-state rival, the San Antonio Rampage.

Then he spent a decade watching Rantanen run roughshod over the NHL for the Stars’ biggest rival, the Colorado Avalanche.

“I knew him too well,” Nill said with a chuckle.

But he never entertained the possibility of Rantanen wearing Victory Green. Yes, Rantanen was entering the final year of his contract this season, but Nill knew the chances of Colorado trading him within the division were, well, nil. And pursuing him in free agency this summer never was considered an option. So when Hurricanes GM Eric Tulsky shocked the hockey world by acquiring Rantanen in late January, Nill was just happy to have him out of the division. Heck, out of the conference.

Nill, meanwhile, felt pretty good about the trade he made a week later, acquiring forward Mikael Granlund and defenseman Cody Ceci from the San Jose Sharks.

“I was comfortable if that was all the trades we did,” Nill said. “We did that early because of the injuries to Miro (Heiskanen) and (Tyler) Seguin. We had two holes there, and we thought we filled in our holes with that trade. But you’re always making calls at the trade deadline.”

One of the things Nill was hearing on some of those calls was that Carolina was concerned that Rantanen wouldn’t re-sign. He wasn’t producing at his typical rate, and he didn’t seem overjoyed to be in Raleigh, either. The Hurricanes had just watched Jake Guentzel — their big deadline acquisition a year earlier — walk in free agency, and were wary of it happening again.

Suddenly, Rantanen was on the market. Again. Maybe.

“They could’ve kept him, hoping to sign him — maybe have a good run and sign him after that,” Nill said. “But they went through the Guentzel thing. They were probably a little bit worried: Is this going to be story No. 2? So we started making calls.”

This was about a week to 10 days out from the March 7 trade deadline. There were plenty of suitors, but the more the two sides talked, the more Dallas emerged as a frontrunner in the sweepstakes, with young rising star Logan Stankoven — a relentless, speedy, Hurricanes-type player if ever there were one — as the centerpiece of the potential deal.

Nill and his head coach, Pete DeBoer, are usually in constant contact, hashing out the team’s needs and desires on a near daily basis. But Nill was wary of getting DeBoer’s hopes up, worried that the possibility of acquiring Rantanen was “fool’s gold.”

Not that he really needed advice on this one.

“Does he need Pete DeBoer to tell him Rantanen is a good player? No,” DeBoer said with a laugh.

But DeBoer got looped in as things got serious. At approximately 1 a.m. on the night before/morning of the trade deadline, Nill and Tulsky had hammered out the framework of the deal. Now came the hard part: Signing Rantanen to a contract extension. Because Dallas wasn’t making the deal without one, certainly not for Stankoven.

This is where Colorado and Carolina failed. Dallas had no such trouble. By 10 a.m., Nill and Rantanen’s camp had come to terms on an eight-year, $96-million contract.

So why was Dallas able to do what Colorado and Carolina couldn’t? Well, sure, there’s Texas’ status as a tax-free state, an undeniable advantage in negotiations. The Stars’ reputation as a haven for Finns certainly helped, too, as Roope Hintz is a longtime friend of Rantanen’s, and he’s played internationally with the others. The symbolism of the final goal of Game 1 of the Western Conference final on Wednesday being scored with five Finns on the ice — Rantanen, Heiskanen, Esa Lindell, Hintz and Granlund — wasn’t lost on anyone in Dallas.

“It’s nice to be able to feel comfortable among the guys,” Rantanen said.

But the way Nill sees it, the chance to play for the Dallas Stars superseded everything else.

“I hear about the no-tax stuff, and yeah, there are some advantages,” Nill said. “It helps, it doesn’t hurt. But we’ve lost some players because of other reasons. It evens out. But in the end, if you’re a good team, you’re going to draw players. You hear about Florida and Tampa; no one wanted to go there when they were bad. And nobody wanted to come to Dallas when we were bad. But players want to win. These guys are thoroughbreds, they’re wired, they’re competitive. These are the best in the business, in the world. They want to win, and we have an opportunity to win here.

“You start winning, you become a destination.”

Indeed, winning is like a perpetual-motion machine — it feeds itself. The more you win, the more good players want to be a part of your team. And look at the Stars now. They’ve got their cagey veterans in Tyler Seguin (signed through 2026-27), Jamie Benn and Matt Duchene (both pending UFAs, but but of whom Nill is certain will be back next season). They’ve got a core of guys in their prime in Heiskanen (signed through 2029), Hintz (2031), Jason Robertson (2026 but under team control), Esa Lindell (2031) and goalie Jake Oettinger (2033). And they’ve got a wave of young stars in Wyatt Johnston, Thomas Harley, Mavrik Bourque and Lian Bichsel.

Now, as the centerpiece, they have Rantanen, one of a handful of true superstars in the game. Perhaps no team in the league is built so well, or built to last so long.

And yet Nill is still looking for his first Stanley Cup championship as a general manager, and Dallas’ first in more than a quarter-century. The Stars won Game 1 of the Western Conference final against Edmonton on Wednesday, with Game 2 to be played Friday night in Dallas.

That first trade that ripped Nill’s heart out of his chest sent him to the Canucks and all the way to the 1982 Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the dynastic New York Islanders. He’s been chasing that trophy for more than four decades since, winning it four times as a part of the Red Wings’ front office. When he talks to his younger players who might take all this success — three straight trips to the conference final, nine series victories in the last six years — for granted, his philosophy is the same as his philosophy when it came to Rantanen:

When you have a chance to do something special, don’t waste it.

“We’ve been knocking on the door for a while,” he said. “And you only get so many opportunities. Well, we’ve got an opportunity now. Let’s take advantage of it.”

(Photo of Jim Nill: Christopher Hanewinckel / Getty Images)

Amid the NIL gold rush, college sports programs seeking an edge with top talent are reuniting with star alumni—and sending them out on the recruiting trail.

Last month, as the NBA regular season was barreling toward its conclusion, Atlanta Hawks guard Terance Mann had more on his mind than his team’s push for a playoff spot. The basketball program at his alma mater, Florida State University, had won only 17 games and failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament, and Mann wanted to help. So he chipped in with recruiting, connecting the team with guard Martin Somerville—a transfer prospect from the University of Massachusetts whom he knew from off-season workouts—and eventually steering Somerville to Tallahassee.

“Martin Somerville is going to play a lot for us next year,” says Luke Loucks, who was hired as Florida State’s coach in March. “Without Terance, we had no shot at getting him, and we beat out some really big schools that were willing to pay way more in NIL to get him.”

In the four years since the NCAA begrudgingly began to allow its athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness, big-time college sports have quickly become a bidding war for top players. In addition to the branded social media posts and local television commercials that rulesmakers might have envisioned when they opened the doors to commercial deals for athletes on campus, boosters have pooled their resources and formed collectives to funnel money to recruits—nominally for marketing services but in practice often a thinly veiled form of pay-for-play.

Three antitrust lawsuits—House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA—are currently awaiting court approval for a settlement that would inject even more money into the system, enabling universities to directly pay athletes a share of their media, ticket and sponsorship revenue and effectively ending college sports’ commitment to amateurism. For example, according to the Houston Chronicle, the University of Texas plans to spend $35 million to $40 million on its football roster next season between its NIL payouts and the revenue-sharing payments, which are expected to be capped initially at $20.5 million. Already, however, programs’ price tags are eye-popping. Last July, Ohio State’s athletic director told the Columbus Dispatch that the school’s football players had received roughly $20 million in NIL deals over the previous year through a variety of third parties.

Naturally, not every university has the wherewithal to keep up, and even the ones that do are fighting for a competitive edge. A handful of institutions believe they have found an answer that goes beyond dollars and cents—all-star alumni like Mann, a six-year NBA veteran who played for the Seminoles from 2015 to 2019.

In April, Mann officially rejoined Florida State as assistant general manager of the men’s basketball program. He will not be an FSU employee or be paid for his role, but he will be expected to play a part in player development as well as recruiting.

“It’s a great idea,” says Mann, 28. “As long as the landscape stays this way, colleges should find somebody that will help them recruit, raise money and be an ambassador all in one, and I think eventually we’re going to see most of them doing it.”

A month before Mann started his new side hustle, Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry paved the way by becoming the assistant general manager for the men’s and women’s basketball teams at his alma mater, Davidson College—billed as the first time an active athlete from a major North American sports league had accepted an administrative role with an NCAA program. Three weeks later, Trae Young, Mann’s teammate on the NBA’s Hawks, went back to the University of Oklahoma in a similar role, and Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby followed in April by taking a position with Eastern Michigan University’s football program. (And this doesn’t even include former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, who became Stanford football’s general manager in November, five years after retiring from the NFL.)

It’s hardly the first time schools have leaned on famous alumni for a boost. Former players of Duke University’s basketball program routinely show up to games at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Loucks notes, and the Blue Devils’ “Brotherhood” has long been a selling point to prospective recruits. But the new trend is a more formal relationship, and it comes with one additional advantage: Official members of a program can contact recruits, whereas alumni and boosters are generally prohibited under NCAA bylaws from calling them directly and are limited to certain types of interaction on campus.

The reinforcements give colleges a new tool to build—and preserve—their rosters in an era complicated by not only NIL money but also laxer transfer rules, which allow athletes to seek better compensation from rival schools without having to sit out seasons if they switch programs. The offers can be enticing: According to NIL deal marketplace Opendorse, the top 100 earners in men’s college sports bring in more than $1 million on average, and the corresponding figure for women’s athletes is around $250,000. There is even big money to be found in smaller sports, such as softball, which saw ace pitcher NiJaree Canady jump from Stanford to Texas Tech last year with a guarantee of more than $1 million for a single year’s commitment.

Across NCAA Division I men’s basketball, more than 2,500 players entered the transfer portal in 2025, according to college basketball recruitment website VerbalCommits.com, nearly triple the 957 that did so in 2019, a year after the new transfer system was introduced.

“Because players can leave and go to other schools, how do you keep them happy?” says Mark Conrad, director of the sports business program at Fordham University. “You can’t sign them to long-term contracts, yet you want them to stay.”

One strategy might be to keep around a professional athlete like Young, a four-time NBA All-Star who was the league’s fifth overall draft pick in 2018. He could help Oklahoma identify talent, mentor young players and balance the egos that come with uneven compensation in a locker room, Conrad contends. Young could also assist with creating a culture of retaining athletes—even if that might be a bit ironic for a player who spent a single season in college, in 2017-18, before turning pro.

Young says college sports’ emerging obstacles are exactly what drew him back to his alma mater. After Oklahoma lost its first-round NCAA tournament matchup against the University of Connecticut this year, he was moved when he heard Sooners coach Porter Moser say that winning in April and May—a key time for transfers and recruiting in college basketball—translates to winning in March Madness.

“It hit home,” Young says. “I definitely am always rooting for my school.”

Since leaving college life in Norman, Young has maintained close ties with the university and says he spent years talking with athletic director Joe Castiglione about how he could get involved. The idea to step in as an assistant general manager materialized shortly before the school made the announcement in March. (Mann says that when Young struck his deal, a “light bulb went off” for him, too, and he got a call from Loucks the same day.)

Young, whose Hawks ended up losing their two play-in games and missing the NBA playoffs, has already begun talking to athletic department donors as well as recruits and transfers, although he declined to name anyone. His most impactful move thus far, however, was a $1 million commitment he made to Oklahoma as part of his deal to join the program. Castiglione did not offer specifics on how the money would be deployed but says it will be used in “areas that help the basketball program,” which could include NIL funding. (Oklahoma also declined to reveal the amount of NIL money its athletes receive.)

Young hasn’t ruled out making additional donations in the future—and he could certainly afford to. In addition to his $43 million NBA playing salary this season, Forbes estimates he earned $3 million off the court over the past 12 months from endorsements, appearances, licensing income and other business endeavors. Mann, meanwhile, collected more than $12 million in total earnings (before taxes and agent fees) and made an undisclosed donation to Florida State. And Curry—who pulled in an estimated $156 million over the past 12 months, ranking second among the world’s highest-paid athletes—is contributing to a new eight-figure fund for Davidson athletes.

It remains to be seen exactly how much time these celebrities will dedicate to their schools since none are planning to give up their day jobs anytime soon. Young, who just finished building a house in Norman, says there will be weeks or months when he’s more involved and others when he’s less engaged, depending on the ebbs and flows of the NBA season. The same goes for Mann, who plans to make a few trips to Tallahassee this summer and has already joined the Florida State coaches’ group chat.

“I don’t think it’s just an ambassador thing where we show up, smile, shake hands and post on our social medias about it,” Mann says. “I think me and [Young] are very much involved in our colleges, and we are hands-on. We both don’t want to see anything on our name not be good. We’re both competitors.”

Young is also thinking in competitive terms.

“I need myself a ring,” he says. “I only had one chance at it, and I didn’t do really well in my tournament experience—we lost in the first round.

“You need four, five, six, seven guys that can win you a championship, so I’m going to go get them and bring me and this university our first championship.”

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