Last year, Jim Nill became the second two-time winner of the NHL’s Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award.
On Friday night, the Dallas Stars GM officially made it a three-peat, beating out the Florida Panthers’ Bill Zito, who built the defending Stanley Cup champions, and the Winnipeg Jets’ Kevin Cheveldayoff, whose team outran preseason expectations to win the Presidents’ Trophy for the league’s best record.
Nill, the first three-time winner in the award’s history, pulled off a remarkable deadline-day coup, acquiring star winger Mikko Rantanen from the Carolina Hurricanes and immediately signing him to a long-term extension. Rantanen started the season with the Avalanche, who sent him to Carolina on Jan. 25 when they believed their negotiations had hit a dead end. Carolina couldn’t sell Rantanen on a long-term extension with the franchise, putting him back on the market as the deadline approached, and Nill pounced.
“You don’t find players like Mikko Rantanen,” Nill told The Athletic’s Mark Lazerus in May. “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.”
For now, not well enough. The Stars have made the playoffs in eight of Nill’s 12 seasons as their general manager; they’ve also now lost in the Western Conference finals in three consecutive years.
Dallas, though, remains on an undeniably long run of overall success. Rantanen’s presence, along with that of players like Miro Heiskanen, Roope Hintz, Jake Oettinger, Jason Robertson and Wyatt Johnston — all drafted by Nill — have the Stars set up well for the future.
The league first handed out the GM award after the 2009-10 season and renamed it in 2019 to honor Gregory, a longtime NHL executive, former Maple Leafs GM and Hockey Hall of Famer.
(Photo: LM Otero / AP Photo)