Dallas Stars boss relishes days with Jets 1.0

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This article was published 24/02/2016 (3512 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

His fingerprints are all over one of the NHL’s elite squads. It’s trade deadline week, meaning there isn’t a waking moment — and likely even some when his head is on the pillow — when Jim Nill isn’t rolling around ideas to improve his Dallas Stars.

And yet there was the 57-year-old Stars general manager earlier this week taking a few valuable minutes to reminisce about a life in the game, including a four-year stretch in Winnipeg with the Jets 1.0.

“It’s been a few years since then, but they were good years,” said the Stars boss in a phone interview from Texas. “We really enjoyed Winnipeg. It was a great place for us and we actually kept going back there to visit friends after I got traded away.

“We’ve still got lots of friends back there, friends we made away from the game that became friends forever.

“I really enjoyed my time there.”

Ask around the NHL and the consensus about Nill is universal: when he gushes about Winnipeg he isn’t simply playing to the local audience. He’s as genuine and honest as they come, a straight shooter to coaches, players and agents.

Said Stars centre Tyler Seguin earlier this year to the USA Today’s Kevin Allen: “He’s like your boss, GM, best friend… he’s like a step-father figure.”

It was 31 years ago this month when Nill became a Jet, in a trade that sent Morris Lukowich to the Boston Bruins.

A sixth-round draft pick of the St. Louis Blues in 1978, Nill had already played for Canada at the 1980 Winter Olympics, a year with the Blues, parts of three seasons with the Vancouver Canucks and two campaigns with the Boston Bruins when John Ferguson pulled the trigger on the deal to bring him west.

Nill wasn’t a prolific scorer — he did have 47 goals and 93 points in his last year of junior with the Medicine Hat Tigers — but was more of a character-type whose skillset was more appreciated by teammates and coaches than hockey poolies.

Those were decent Jets teams back then — the 1984-85 squad had the fourth-best record in the NHL — but the same script kept unfolding when it mattered.

“It was Edmonton and Calgary every year in the playoffs,” recalled Nill. “That was a good team in Winnipeg but the whole thing was in the first round we were either playing Edmonton or Calgary.

“We played Calgary a lot and whoever won that series was so beat up when they went on to play Edmonton. That was a tough division. Good hockey, but a tough division.”

It was the Oilers who dispatched the Jets in the division final in 1985 before winning the Stanley Cup; the Flames a year later en route to a trip to the final, where they would fall to the Montreal Canadiens.

In ’85 the Jets would knock off Calgary in the opening round, but lose Dale Hawerchuk before being swept by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Oilers. And by ’88 Nill was on the move again, shipped to Detroit for Mark Kumpel.

But it was around that time when Nill also began thinking about a life after hockey. And, looking back now, thinking about what makes a hockey team work; that unique mix of chemistry that brings Canadians, Americans, Europeans together. Sometimes it’s not there, but when it is…

“The dressing room we had back then was really tight,” said Nill. “We were always going ice fishing or snowmobiling or events downtown together. That whole team seemed to be around the same age, with a couple of older guys sprinkled in. We had good leadership with guys like Randy Carlyle and some good young kids coming up.

“John Ferguson, bless his soul, was a mentor to me and he did a good job of putting the team together. It was a good place to play and with the people we met there outside of hockey, that’s what kept us coming back.”

After the trade to Detroit, Nill began contemplating a career in the investment business — he had his broker’s licence — when then-Red Wings GM Jimmy Devellano offered him a chance to coach with their AHL affiliate in Adirondack.

He then spent three years with the Ottawa Senators as a scout in their early days before returning to the Red Wings and really beginning his hockey management apprenticeship.

“John Ferguson, Jim Devellano and (current Wings GM) Ken Holland, those were my mentors,” said Nill. “I was fortunate. I had some great people influence me. I had some opportunities… I had interviews for some other jobs and when I look back and it was probably a good thing I didn’t get them because I wouldn’t have been ready. We all have aspirations to get to some place, the trouble is we often don’t have enough patience and figure we should get there quicker than we do. Looking back, I was probably lucky that I didn’t get hired in those jobs because I might have been eaten up and spit out.

“I spent a lot of years in Detroit and learned a lot. I started to understand the biggest thing I had to learn was managing people. You’ve still got to make hockey decisions, but in the end it’s about hiring the right people and managing people. I had to learn that. I was used to being the guy who went out and found the players. But as you move up the ladder there’s less and less of that. I can’t go to Europe and see all the players so it’s about hiring good people and letting them do their jobs.”

All that said, it was Nill — hired by the Stars in April 2013 — who pulled the trigger on trades that landed Seguin, Jason Spezza and Patrick Sharp and added pieces like Ales Hemsky and Johnny Oduya in free agency. The Stars aren’t without their flaws, but there’s also a ton to like about this team as the playoffs near.

“I like our team. I like the mix,” said Nill. “And I’m excited about our depth because we’ve got some good kids coming up ready to help us. But you always have to be open to listen.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait