Long Drive: On Neil Graham, Alex Petrovic, Curtis McKenzie, and the Remarkable Resilience of the Texas Stars
There and Back Again (and Again and Again)
But you say I'm alright
Baby I don't mind
I'll get on just fine
On them long long drives
***
It’s 95 degrees outside on Friday afternoon, which I’ve begrudingly begun to consider temperate for a June day in Texas. I’ve only been back in this state for six years, but the first description I ever heard of its weather from May to October still holds true: When you open the door—any door—it’s like someone breathing their hot breath right into your face.
Thankfully, my Mazda’s air conditioner is working just fine, and besides, I’m wearing a t-shirt from a 5K I ran over a decade ago, so life could be much less pleasant. My suit and tie are hanging from the grab handle behind me, but I won’t need them until 6pm, when I’ll pull into the H-E-B Center in Cedar Park. That’s where Tom Gaglardi’s American Hockey League team will try to have a much better Game 5 than Dallas did last week in their own Western Conference Final. But with a similar 3-1 deficit, the Texas Stars will likewise have their work cut out for them.
Traffic is surprisingly clear as I head down I-35, considering that I started out later than I had originally planned. Friday afternoons should be a murderous time to brave I-35, but I manage to make it down by 5:00pm, in plenty of time to stop at a coffee shop and write up a quick story on Pete DeBoer’s firing before I don the suit and tie in one of the cleanest Starbucks restrooms I’ve ever seen.
I make it into the building in time to partake in the Texas Stars’ always-great media meal, more than happy to indulge myself at the prime rib carving station, with a salad and some salmon as a reward for the hard work I’ve done today (i.e., Sitting in my car for a few hours).
That there would be a delay in my journey became apparent at 9:30 that morning, when the entire hockey world got the news that Jim Nill, as he so often does, had some big news that hadn’t leaked out before he broke it: Pete DeBoer had been fired by the Dallas Stars.
I presume that Alex Petrovic made this same drive right after Dallas’s season ended a week ago. Petrovic will tell me after the game that Nill had given the veteran of over 250 NHL games the option of coming back to Texas to help with their AHL playoff run, but for Petrovic, it was never really a question at all.
“In my mind, it just would have been weird if I was at home while these guys were still playing,” the 33-year-old defenseman says. “It would have been tough for me to watch.”
It’s the opposite of what Petrovic did last year, when he played in the entirety of Texas’s playoff run, only to be recalled to Dallas after the AHL team’s run ended against Milwaukee in the second round. Petrovic would come up to Dallas last season and immediately supplant a barely-used Nils Lundkvist as the team’s sixth defenseman in a thrilling, double-overtime victory over Colorado in Game 6 before the team’s power play went quiet and Stuart Skinner won the first of what would later become two straight series over Dallas in the postseason.
This year, Petrovic was up in the NHL for all of Dallas’s playoff run. And once again, he would end up supplanting someone who spent far more of the season in the starting lineup, in Ilya Lyubushkin. Because despite playing only five NHL games in Dallas all season, Petrovic still had the trust of his now-former coach when the stakes were highest.
And when you watch Petrovic’s game, it’s easy to see why. He uses every bit of his 6-foot-5 frame to cover the most important ice he can without getting out of position, while he also lends creative vision in the offensive zone. That vision may or may not have been the reason for one of the odder goals you’ll ever see in the NHL against Connor Hellebuyck last month, but there’s no denying that Petrovic is a huge boost for this Texas team deep into a playoff run.
However, after things fell apart in the third round for Dallas this year, Petrovic once again had a second playoff run to jump into. But this one came with a bigger risk: As a veteran, Petrovic couldn’t be sent down to the AHL without first going through waivers. That meant any other NHL team would have the chance to claim him, as often happens late in NHL training camp when roster cuts are happening and players are being re-assigned to the minor leagues en masse.
Such claims are less likely when the Stanley Cup Final is going on, with many teams anticipating a lot of other changes when NHL free agency commences on July 1. Claiming a player like Petrovic usually isn’t in the June plans for other organizations, but you never know what some teams are thinking, Petrovic says. All it takes is for one other NHL team to see him as an upgrade to their in-house options on defense, and his time in Texas could come to an end in an instant, with a year still remaining on his contract.
No waiver claim happened, however, so Petrovic is here, extremely grateful to be able to re-join the team he spent 58 games with this season. Petrovic is the most NHL-seasoned player on their roster, essentially doubling the team’s cumulative games of NHL experience.
“I’m very fortunate,” Neil Graham will say after the game. “I’ve coached [Petrovic] for four years. We’ve all been through a lot together […] so to get him back, what a boost. You know what he’s gonna do on both sides of the puck. He’s a part of our family here, and we’re really happy to have him.”1
Petrovic expresses similar gratitude on Friday night after playing significant minutes in a 1-1 goalie duel that will go to overtime. Texas will receive outstanding goaltending from journeyman goaltender Magnus Hellberg and an early power play goal on a nifty no-look backhand shot through the five-hole from Justin Hryckowian, who won the AHL rookie of the year award in 2024-25, just as Logan Stankoven did for Texas the year prior.
Hryckowian has been one of Texas’s best forwards this year, but the reality is that Texas’s forward group only boasts 155 combined games of NHL experience, whereas Abbotsford’s forwards have nearly 1,000 NHL games of experience (989, to be exact). These Canucks are the more traditional sort of AHL powerhouse, one populated with more veteran players, including somewhat familiar NHL names like Jujhar Khaira, Sammy Blais, Arshdeep Bains, and Phillip di Giuseppe.
Texas, in contrast, has had to fill out their AHL roster more creatively, as much of Dallas’s draft stock have graduated to the NHL in recent years. Departed players include talented Dallas draft picks like Jake Oettinger, Jason Robertson, Thomas Harley, Mavrik Bourque, Logan Stankoven, and of course, Lian Bichsel. None of those players are here for this playoff run.
Instead, Texas has had to rely on signing other players, such as college free agents like Hryckowian and defenseman Trey Taylor, both of whom have been instrumental in Texas’ success this postseason. With Dallas making a deep playoff run this year, players like Petrovic and Lian Bichsel weren’t available to play for Texas earlier. Neil Graham and Scott White have had to make do, and what they’ve done is quite remarkable indeed.
Texas’s first priority is to develop players for the Dallas Stars. That’s the nature of most every AHL team in the league. But as Stephen Meserve and Sean Shapiro wrote in their excellent book We Win Here, Texas’s second task is to win games while that development is happening. And despite constantly seeing their best players moving on to play for a very successful Dallas team in recent years, this team has still found ways to win lots of games.
In their five full seasons under head coach Neil Graham, the Texas Stars have had only one with a losing record. This year marks the second time in three seasons that Graham’s Stars have hit the 40-win mark in Texas’s 72-game regular season, and they’ve done it while playing a strong offensive game that bears a lot of similarities to the NHL club three hours north.
This year, Texas boasted the highest-scoring forward in the AHL: Matěj Blümel, who scored a league-leading 39 goals in 67 AHL games this season. Blümel was drafted by Edmonton back in 2019, but the Oilers failed to retain his rights in 2021, whether intentionally or not, and Dallas signed him the following year.
Blümel will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, but his oustanding performance this year (which also included a couple of NHL call-ups with a goal to boot), will surely give him plenty of professional options on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For now, however, Blümel is focused on the same thing as his teammates: keeping the season alive.
Hellberg starts Game 5, after taking over for Remi Poirier midway through Game 4, when Poirier had surrendered four goals to Abbotsford through two periods. That’s when Graham swapped his goalies, as he’s done many times this season, and Hellberg went on to shut down the opposition for the third period and the first overtime of Game 4. But despite being just one shot away from tying the series 2-2, Hellberg would finally get beaten once and for all in the second overtime period to put Texas in the 3-1 series hole they’re now trying to dig their way out of.
In Game 5, Hellberg is again facing down Artūrs Šilovs,2 yet another member of Abbotsford with meaningful NHL experience. This is the same goalie who pushed Edmonton to seven games last posteason during his time with Vancouver.
It’s funny how NHL storylines tend to converge in the AHL. If Šilovs makes just one more save for Vancouver in Game 7 of the secound round in 2024, the Stars would have been spared the task of facing the Oilers, and Joe Pavelski’s final team might have found those Canucks a better matchup than Edmonton turned out to be, and who knows what happens? But that’s ancient history now, and Hellberg and his teammates will be hoping Šilovs once again comes up short at least one more save on Friday night.
After two periods of shutout hockey, Hellberg finally surrenders a power play goal to Bains early in the third period after an ill-fated shorthanded rush by Texas. And from that point on, it feels like the next goal will be the winning one.
With two minutes to go, Hellberg faces down Nate Smith on a breakaway, and Smith dekes Helleberg one way and tries to go back around Hellberg’s left pad for what looks like the game-winner, for an instant.
But for the second game in a row, Hellberg holds the fort in regulation, and he gets his team through sixty minutes with the game still alive. The season has been saved, for now. Onto overtime.
Like Petrovic a couple years back, Hellberg joined Dallas last summer knowing he would likely start the season in the AHL. Hellberg would be the most likely NHL recall in the event of an injury to either Jake Oettinger or Casey DeSmith, but both goaltenders were reliable all year for Dallas, and the 34-year-old Hellberg has spent the entire season in the AHL as half of a goaltending tandem with Poirier. Hellberg is not signed for next season, and it is possible that he will be returning to his native Sweden next year to finish out his hockey career.
But on Friday night in Cedar Park, Magnus Hellberg doesn’t care about what happened in the past or what awaits him in the future. He is clearly pumped up for the opportunity to play in front of a sold-out crowd in Texas, and he makes more than a couple of sparkling, desperate saves, drawing roars from the thousands of fans in attendance. You can feel his love for the game when he triumphantly claps his catching glove on top of a puck to end one of a few sequences of furious Abbotsford pressure.
Petrovic will also make his dedication to this group clear when he picks up a fighting major and an additional roughing minor in a wild sequence at the end of the second period, when both Texas and Abbotsford are called for four penalties—all of which just so happen to match up.
Petrovic will grin as he finally gets corralled by the Abbotsford bench. After over five minutes of clerical work for the officials, it’s determined that while no power plays will be awarded, Texas will lose three of its most veteran players for the start of the third period: Kyle Capobianco, Curtis McKenzie, and Petrovic.
I talk to Petrovic after the game, and I feel slightly guilty for pulling him away from his wife and children for a couple of minutes. Petrovic’s sons clearly weren’t fazed by their father’s fisticuffs an hour earlier, as they spend our conversation alternating between politely standing a foot away and turning their dad into their personal jungle gym. It occurs to me that even the relatively small risk of a waiver claim must have made for a very tense 24 hours for the whole family, father and all.
One of the reasons Petrovic ended up back in Dallas for his second straight postseason promotion was his chemistry with Dallas rookie Lian Bichsel, who fought through a shoulder injury during the Stars’ 18-game run in his first NHL season and postseason. Petrovic and Bichsel played together both in Texas and in Dallas on a sizable third defense pairing, and the comfort level for both players was obvious during the entire run.
“Playing with him, it was unreal,” Petrovic says of Bichsel. “He played so physical up there. He used his size, such a great skater. And especially at that time of the year, those big games, like the Game 7 against Colorado, he played great. He’s 21 years old now, and what more could be asked from a guy like that?”
Bichsel’s physical presence was noticeable in the NHL, too, when he leveled Connor Brown with a hard (but legal) check that kept Brown out for the rest of the round. But in the end, it was Dallas’s offense and penalty kill that came up short, as much as anything. And that’s why Petrovic even had the option of making his second playoff run in as many leagues, this spring.
This game is being played not only in front of a sold-out crowd, but also in front of Jim Nill, who just fired his NHL coach at 9:00am that same day. Nill described letting go of Pete DeBoer as a very difficult decision, one that is reflective of the tenuous nature and high expectations surroudning almost all NHL coaching jobs these days. Nill has also made the drive down I-35 (along with a few other members of his Dallas hockey operations team) to watch Texas’s players, as well as their coach.
Dallas was one of the final four teams in three straight playoff runs under Deboer, but Dallas looked outmatched against this year’s Oilers, winning only one game in the Western Conference Final. That’s a total the Texas Stars are looking to double Friday night, if they can pull out an overtime victory in Game 5. But it’s not only the wins and losses that ended up costing DeBoer his job.
DeBoer also ended the season by highlighting his goaltender’s lack of success against the Oilers for two straight postseasons, and those comments, coming right on the heels of a demonstrative goalie pull, set off a media firestorm that Nill acknowledged DeBoer felt some remorse for. Nill also acknowledged that DeBoer’s handling of the aftermath of Game 5 was only one component of the decision to move on from Deboer during his noon press conference earlier that Friday.
In that same conference, Nill confirmed that he would be “open-minded” in the search for a new coach, as well as confirming (when asked) that Graham would certainly be someone they look at in the search process.
“I think [Graham] is probably gonna be a candidate. He’s done a good job, someone we’ve gotta look at it,” Nill said. “All he’s done is won and developed, and that’s not easy to do.”
Nill pointed to how Texas has graduated players like Mavrik Bourque, Thomas Harley, and Logan Stankoven. And how, in spite of having to lose such great players, Graham has kept on finding ways to be successful.
“He keeps winning, and he keeps developing players,” Nill says of Graham. “We’ve got some young kids down therethat we signed as free agents out of college, and now they’re playing great. He just does a good job.”
And as Graham and his coaching staff cross the ice surface on their way back to the bench ahead of overtime, I see Graham give a familiar fist-bump to someone who looks like a member of the ice maintenance crew. Like most head coaches in hockey, I don’t suspect Graham misses much. I suspect that must also include the presence of the Dallas general manager sitting upstairs during this elimination game.
On the drive down, I hear Graham’s name mentioned in every podcast or radio conversation about whom Nill might tap for Dallas’s head coaching job, and it occurs to me that it might be a bit rough on Graham if he has to answer questions about the NHL head coaching vacancy on a night when his team’s season ends.
It is not my favorite part of this business, asking questions I know coaches (and players) would prefer not to answer, but the story is too big, and Graham’s proximity too close to it, to spare him at least the opportunity to share his thoughts on what has transpired in what must have been a whirlwind of a day for him.
And from Graham’s answer to a question about the coaching vacancy and his time in the organization after the game, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether his team’s season had just ended or not. Graham is completely unfazed by the question and responds calmly, despite having every right to dismiss it, if he so chose:
“We tell our players to stay present, to stay where your feet are. You never like to see anyone lose their job. It’s a tough industry that we’re all in. Right now, we’re in a playoff hunt. We’re trying to win a Calder Cup, and that’s our focus. But at the end of the day, I’ve been a part of this organization for 13 years, and I love this organization. It’s been a great opportunity for me.”
-Texas Stars Head Coach Neil Graham, 6/6/2025
But despite how this day began, it ultimately will not be about Graham, or DeBoer, or any of the players looking to make a strong impression for their future in the NHL.
Of those aforementioned 155 games of NHL experience among Texas’s forwards, their captain, Curtis McKenzie, accounts for 99 of them. But McKenzie played the last of those 99 games during Ken Hitchcock’s second go-round in Dallas in 2017-18. Since then, he tried his luck with a couple other organizations, but he didn’t see any NHL action, and he came back home to Texas in 2021.
McKenzie is in more than a few ways the Jamie Benn of this roster, someone whose tenure reaches back so far3 that it overlaps with names that still surprise you. In fact, McKenzie is one of only three people on the Texas bench who was on the Stars’ Calder Cup team in 2014. And the other two people are Travis Morin and Max Fortunus, Graham’s two assistant coaches.
By the way, if you haven’t seen the delightful video from last year of the trio reminiscing about that championship run, there’s no time like now to do so.
McKenzie got his shot in the NHL, and he deserved it. His 99 games in the show (including a playoff game with Dallas in 2015-16) are more than the vast majority of hockey players will ever see, and McKenzie doesn’t strike you as someone who feels like he’s missing out. In fact, the Texas captain’s maturity and perspective stretch far beyond the ice, most recently being highlighted by his winning the AHL’s Yanick Dupré Award for his outstanding charitable work in the community this year.
McKenzie’s leadership is also evident on the ice, as he and Petrovic look entirely comfortable responding to the physical, antagonistic game that playoff teams like Abbotsford tend to bring.
McKenzie even gets a breakaway in the third period of this 1-1 game after a beautiful pass from Kole Lind sends him in alone. But McKenzie fights off heavy backchecking pressure as he shoots, and his attempt to stuff the puck five-hole doesn’t succeed, and the veteran captain’s game-winner is not to be, this time.
Abbotsford have a great look at the game (and series) early in overtime, when Jujhar Khaira rips a one-timer on a 3-on-2 chance two minutes into the extra frame. But with that same left pad that saved his team late in the third period, Magnus Hellberg makes his 30th save of the game, and we play on. Not for much longer, though.
Because less than a minute later, Curtis McKenzie gets another chance. A Texas dump-in off the boards bounces awkwardly, and the Canucks don’t sort it out well. An onrushing Jack Becker4 and McKenzie win the puck, and Becker carries it below the goal line as McKenzie stays above it, before Becker feeds his captain with the game on the line.
McKenzie puts the puck on net, but he’s not sure where it goes, as Šilovs appears to have the near post covered. McKenzie furiously digs at the goaltender’s glove, only for the other two Texas forwards to see the puck and start celebrating. Because McKenzie had shot it past Šilovs all along.
“It was a great hunt by Becks there to get the guy off the puck,” McKenzie said after the game. “Becks made a great play taking it behind the net and putting it back out short side to myself there, and it went in. I think it was Petey [Emilio Pettersen5] I saw jumping behind the net first, and then you kind of see the puck in the net.”
McKenzie finally realizes he’s done it, and he pumps his fists with joy before immediately heading back down the ice to greet Hellberg, who deserves every bit of the bear hug McKenzie gives him.
(The highlights are worth watching for that hug alone, I think.)
The Texas Stars will not be going home just yet. Far from it, though Texas still has a very tough job ahead of them. They lost their first two games in Abbotsford to start this series, and now they will have to win two straight road games to advance to the Calder Cup Final. Nothing is easy in this league.
Neil Graham, Curtis McKenzie, Alex Petrovic, and their whole team will play Game 6 on Sunday night at 8:00pm Central, way back in Abbotsford, British Columbia. If they win that game, then they’ll have a Game 7 the very next evening, at 9:00pm Central on Monday. The AHL schedule is not a merciful one, even this late into the playoffs.
I stop at a gas station to change out of my suit before the long, late drive back north. I don’t mind one bit of the three-hour trip back home that will keep me on the road beyond 2:00am,6 but a trip to Abbotsford might be too far of a drive right now, even for me.
But if Texas pulls off the 3-1 series comeback, nothing would make me happier than to drive right back down to Texas for the fourth Calder Cup Final appearance in Texas Stars history. They win here, I’m told.
Graham also emphasized how happy Texas was for Petrovic to get recalled to Dallas as well: “When he was playing for Dallas, we were rooting for him every day. Couldn’t be more proud.”
Hellberg actually mentioned Šilovs in training camp, pointing out that the two goaltenders have done work in the offseason with the same goaltending coach. The hockey world is a small one at times, and the goaltending world an even more closely-knit community within it.
Jamie Benn has played with (among many others) Mike Modano, Brenden Morrow, Brad Richards, Jaromir Jagr, Jere Lehtinen, Marty Turco, Steve Ott, as well as, yes, Travis Morin and Max Fortunus.
A 2015 former Boston Bruins draft pick (7th rd.), the 27-year-old Becker split his time last season between Idaho in the ECHL and with Texas in the AHL. But he played 70 games in Texas this season. McKenzie was, on this shift, playing in Antonio Stranges’s usual spot on the third line with Becker and Emilio Pettersen.
Pettersen was a 2018 Calgary Flames sixth-round draft pick.
Pro tip: Joy in the Morning, by P.G. Wodehouse, and sunflower seeds. Not a single yawn was required.
I've been following the Texas Stars playoff run via the radio call on the team app. It's been exciting to follow the games. I really enjoy the play by play dude. JP's call of all the action is solid. It's cool how loud the crowd is, and it really comes through over the radio. A lot of cowbell in the HEB center.
I enjoyed reading this article.
Sub thought- Abbottsford is a raggedy ass name for a town.
If Dallas Stars fans aren’t watching the Texas Stars play, they are really missing out some fun and feisty hockey.