‘These Are the Things That Mold Your Team’: Jim Nill on Why the Dallas Stars Can Thrive on (and after) an International Road Trip

The Dallas Stars haven’t played a hockey game since they beat Chicago last Saturday on another continent. After a putting up a 7-2-0 record after playing nine games in just 17 days, the Stars packed up and flew to Finland on Sunday. Then they traveled from Helsinki to Tampere, and by all accounts, they’ve had a blast doing it.

As the Stars face the Panthers in the NHL’s Global Series tonight, the NHL season is about to take precedence again, but despite the two games in the next 48 hours, the toughest part of the whole trip might not happen until it’s over.

People often talk about “trap” games in the long grind of an NHL schedule. Often, the term is applied to the first game home after a successful road trip. The temptation can be to look past the task at hand, to assume that after what you just went through, the next challenge won’t require nearly as much focus or determination.

Given that the Stars are about to face the Stanley Cup champions twice on a global stage, you could see that temptation being even stronger than usual. After nearly a week between games, Dallas will have the spotlight in the home country of three of its most important players. Then they’ll fight jet lag as they fly back west, with another 71 games remaining in a schedule that only slows down when the 4 Nations Face-Off arrives in February to throw yet another wrench into the routines that players and coaches rely on so much during a long season.

“It’s felt like we’ve been over here for about a month,” joked Matt Duchene on Friday morning. “I think all of us are like, ‘all right, let’s get back to it now.’ We have a really motivated group, obviously.”

Trap game? More like trap month, if you’re considering a worst-case scenario. Teams like Boston and Nashville are already struggling to catch their competitors after a rough few weeks to their seasons, so it isn’t hard to see how Dallas could face a similar challenge if they were to sag a bit after finally making it back home. Teams come back slowly from long breaks all the time.

After two consecutive trips to the Western Conference Final, Dallas came into the 2024-25 season in as good a position as any team in the league. This team’s competitive window has been wide open for a couple of years now, so you could have understood if the Stars had opted out of the potential “trap” of a glamorous-but-disruptive trip like this one in favor of focusing on a Stanley Cup that looks as close as it’s been in decades.

In talking with General Manager Jim Nill on Thursday, however, he sees a bigger picture.

“There’s always concerns when you make these trips,” said Nill, “Is it gonna catch up to us? But when I look at it with our team, the opportunity for our Finnish players to come home and play in front of their families, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I think those experiences make you better as a team, too.”

Those experiences have included everything from a team trip to the sauna, a frigid plunge into the Baltic Sea, and a caravan to see Esa Lindell drop the puck for a hockey team he played for as a boy, and now co-owns at 30 years old. Miro Heiskanen and Roope Hintz have also spent time in their prior haunts, with Heiskanen visiting his home rink, and Hintz taking the team to eat hot wings at one of his favorite spots in Tampere. Oh, and Hintz also took some time to launch a signature line of shoes, with the proceeds going to a children’s charity.

For Nill though, he believes that a big event that others might label as a distraction could end up working in the Stars’ favor.

“These are the things that mold your team,” said Nill. “It’s easy when you’re winning, but somewhere during the regular season or the playoffs, you’re gonna hit a rough spot. And that’s where these types of trips come into play. When the players have been together and bonded, there’s a love for each other. And those things start to pay off, especially in the playoffs.”

Coach Pete DeBoer echoed similar sentiments on Thursday, mentioning that he can already see the Finnish players and their teammates’ motivations rising during this trip, with the non-Finns particularly excited to play hard for their teammates in order to support them in their home country.

“It’s really special, and you can’t replicate that excitement those guys have,” said DeBoer. “Because of how special those guys are as people and teammates, they’re excited for them, and because of that, they want to put on a show and embrace everything.”

For such a show, you could hardly ask for a better counterpart than Mason Marchment’s former team, in Florida. The eyes of the entire league will be on a matchup between of its best teams, but while it makes for a great show, Marchment acknowledged that this isn’t necessarily the most ideal way to face his old club, in a vacuum.

“It’s my first time coming over here,” Marchment said, “so just to get adapted to the time change is kind of tough. But it’s an exciting challenge to play the defending champs, and you know, it’s gonna be a fun, fun couple games.”

Regardless of how the games turn out, there will be an natural sigh of relief after the pomp and circumstance of the week concludes and things get a bit more back to normal. Nonetheless, Nill believes the Stars are uniquely prepared to handle the come-down from the high that has been Finland.

“Over the last five or six years, I’ve really seen our team evolve,” said Nill. “Two or three years ago, we had some really tough travel things. It would have been easy for your team to say, ‘you know what, tough travel, if we lose, no big deal.’ Our guys don’t have that attitude. Our guys are like, ‘You know what, it happened, we’re gonna deal with it, and we still gotta go win the game.’ I see that in this group. No complaining, you just deal with it. Those things really galvanize your team.”

After all the teambuilding over the last few days in Helsinki and Tampere, the Stars may well be as close as they’ve ever been. Indeed, Friday almost feels like the first day after a family vacation, a harsh reality check that the season is kicking back into gear.

Next week, the more familiar routines in North America will return, but even the smoothest NHL schedule still has a lot of bumps in the road. Whatever and wherever those next hiccups might be, however, Nill believe the Stars are ready to take responsibility for getting past them.

“The most important thing is to take away the excuses,” said Nill. “You start to realize, okay, in life, things happen, and it’s gonna be okay. But you still gotta go perform and do your thing, and that’s the attitude our team has now.”