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)
