Dallas Stars Assistant Coach Neil Graham on Organic Power Play Flexibility, His Year as a Coach/Player, and Treating People the Right Way

Come and hear from one of the new members of the Stars' coaching staff

The 2025-26 Dallas Stars will have a lot of the same players on the bench to start the year. This group is in win-now mode, and the roster reflects that.

Standing behind the bench this year will be two particular people both new and familiar: Glen Gulutzan, returning for a second stint as head coach of the Stars, and Neil Graham, who spent over a decade coaching Dallas’s AHL and ECHL affiliates before arriving in the NHL this summer.

Since beginning his coaching career in the ECHL in 2012 at the age of just 27, Graham has demonstrated his aptitude for the profession. In Idaho, Graham led the Steelheads to a 166-91-31 record over his four seasons as a head coach (following three as an assistant coach). And in the Stars’ AHL affiliate in Texas, Graham has led the team to multiple consecutive postseason appearances, culminating in a deep Western Conference Finals run this spring that ended at the hands of the eventual Calder Cup Champion Abbotsford Canucks.

Following that run—also his sixth season in Texas—Graham was named as one of Gulutzan’s assistant coaches for the upcoming Dallas Stars season, filling one of the roles vacated by the departures of Steve Spott and Misha Donskov, who left for other positions after Pete DeBoer was fired in early June.

Graham was also kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about his coaching career—which started in a season where he ended up making a surprise return to the ice as a player for a few games. Our conversation also touched on the power play, working with players he’s coached previously in Texas, the power play again, and some more philosophical questions about coaching in general.

Hopefully you learn a thing or two, because I certainly did.

[Note: the below conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity, with most of the changes simply aimed at making my questions sound less rambling than they probably were.]

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Robert: What’s the move been like this summer, coming up to DFW after living down in the Cedar Park area since 2019?

Neil Graham: You know, we're very fortunate that we've already had kind of a sneak preview of the Dallas and Frisco area for the last six years, whether it was to come up for a week in the summer for development camp, or to get together early for Traverse City tournaments. You know, there were even some years where we came up and helped with the black aces. We’ve been around it a lot, so it wasn't completely foreign to myself or my wife. So to come up here, really, it was probably as simple of a transition as you could ask in term of logistics. Just getting everyone up here and settled was the priority, and we're all very excited to be here.

At this point, are you starting to get anxious to get started and get the season going?

Yes and no. I think you gotta fight the urge. It's gonna be a long year—we know that from the American Hockey League as well. It's going to come soon enough. So I think, you know, be prepared, use this time wisely to, first off, get your family settled, and then get your hockey and your responsibilities into a good working place. So then when we truly get going here in September, you're ready to go and you're organized.

What has the experience been like with a new coaching staff? How has this time been, especially now that you guys know what the group is going to be this year?

You know what, it's been productive to have those in-person meetings right around the time of Glen's announcement, and then followed by my announcement. We've had a chance to connect in person, and you can tell already that our staff's going to work well in terms of collaboration, sharing ideas, and challenging one another. And I think that's the stuff that excites you as you come into a new environment, a new level, is seeing the really intelligent hockey minds that you're going to have the opportunity to work with. I think that's what excites me the most.

I know you, Glen, and Alain all have all held both assistant and head coaching roles. Do you kind of see that experience show up in what you were talking about, with collaboration and challenging each other to get better, sharing ideas and things like that?

Yeah, I think it certainly can. I think a lot of it's also your DNA as a person and how you like to work within a group setting. I can already tell from our summer, just the way we'll communicate with one another and share ideas. You look at the NHL experience that Glen and Nas and David [Pelletier], our video staff, and Jeff Reese all have. I think it's going to be really important to trust in that process.

That being said, it's also important for myself. It’s never a bad idea to just think of a new idea, or “Have we considered this?” I think that give-and-take, you're going to see on every staff, and it's all how it's received. But I can tell already that there's some genuine enthusiasm about how we're going to work on the day-to-day.

Your relationship with Glen, I think you've mentioned that you've known him for a little while. What has it been like reconnecting with him as part of the same coaching staff?

Yeah. I think, obviously, we're going to work even closer once everyone gets settled in here and we're coming in day-to-day. But for me, I look at it as, what an opportunity to learn from someone that I’ve always looked up to. I have a lot of respect for him, his path, and what he's already done. I can't wait to learn, I can't wait to share some ideas his way, and receive ideas.

I just think, what a unique scenario, an opportunity for myself. At the end of the day, we're here to win. I think that's been clear from day one, and you reference Glen's press conference and talking about that 1% of getting better in particular areas. I'm just excited to be a part of that process and help.

You've had a little bit of a unique path, I think I would say, as a player, and then briefly, as a player coach in Idaho, before you moved into a full-time coaching role. I'd love to hear a little bit about what that was like. Did you know going into that season what would happen? What was that like, your move into coaching?

*Laughs* You know what, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. It wasn't as traditional as sometimes those roles are in the ECHL, or a level like that.

Basically what occurred, I had just finished playing. I was 27, and I came in with the anticipation of being an assistant coach, to help Brad Ralph and learn. But it was actually during the lockout, 2012-13, and all of a sudden you lose some bodies, and we had some guys injured. It was just a unique season where we actually were short bodies. And I was able to pop in and help for eight games, I think it was.

[Author’s note: Graham scored a goal in those eight games and had 4 PIMs.]