Hey Stars fans! In this edition of Green Machine Musings, we will take a look at the story of the Dallas Stars away from the ice in 2013-14. I promise, after this post there will be little looking back and a ton of looking forward in my column. Alas, we should do justice to the men who built this team and examine how well they did their jobs this season.
Owner Tom Gaglardi, President Jim Lites and Company A- Simply put, from 2008 to 2011, the Dallas Stars were one of the most poorly run organizations in hockey. Now, they are a top class organization with the resources and personnel required to compete for the Stanley Cup. The turnaround began at the top and started working its way down in November of 2011, when Vancouver businessman Tom Gaglardi bought the team. A man with deep roots in hockey and a personal connection to North Texas, this man was precisely what the organization needed after floundering through three years of bankruptcy after the bottom dropped out of the economy (and owner Tom Hicks' wallet) in 2008. 2013-14 was essentially Gaglardi's first full year as owner of the club because he purchased the Stars midseason in 2011-12 and 2012-13 was a season cut in half by hockey's third lockout in two decades. With a full season to work with, he set out to leave his mark on the organization this year. He overwhelmingly succeeded in doing so, and we could not be happier with the results.
What I think makes Gaglardi the ideal owner is his willingness to allocate authority to individuals that he sees as fit (go ahead and be envious, Cowboys fans). When Gaglardi took over the team back in 2011, one of his first moves was to re-hire Jim Lites as Team President. Lites, who had held the position previously on two separate occasions (1993-2002 and 2003-2007), is a master of promoting the team and maintaining positive relationships with the fan base and the DFW community. Together, these two individuals and their front office staff have rebuilt the image of the Dallas Stars, both figuratively and literally. In regards to the latter, this team went from having some of the most drab uniforms in the NHL to being instant eye candy for all who watched them, as the club's new "victory green" uniforms were unveiled on June 4th. According to everyone involved, the process of creating the new uniform was neither quick nor easy, but it appears that Tom Gaglardi was spot on when he said, just prior to the release, that he thought that the new jerseys and logo created "a look to stand the test of time." I could not agree more, as the shade of green was adopted by the DFW community at a breakneck pace. A Dallas Stars jersey is once again something to be shown off by all who don it.
At the same time, Tom Gaglardi and his crew have been working very hard to make going to Stars games a prominent part of the Dallas entertainment scene once again. Unfortunately, attendance fell off so rapidly after 2008 that it both has been and remains a long road back at the turnstiles for this team. Charts like this won't go away overnight:
RK TEAM TOTAL AVG PCT
1 Chicago 927,545 22,623 117.6
2 Detroit 908,131 22,149 110.4
3 Los Angeles 779,734 19,017 107.6
4 Vancouver 810,594 19,770 107.2
5 Toronto 797,310 19,446 103.3
6 Minnesota 758,729 18,505 103.1
....
25 New Jersey 625,570 15,257 88.7
26 Florida 581,286 14,177 83.2
27 Carolina 634,832 15,483 82.9
28 Columbus 602,619 14,698 81.0
29 Phoenix 564,798 13,775 80.4
30 Dallas 601,008 14,658 79.1
This chart was published by ESPN. For numbers 6-24, visit espn.com/NHL.
Yep, that chart shows the Dallas Stars as being dead last in the NHL in terms of the percentage of seats in the arena sold for each regular season home game (although I tend to believe that Florida and Phoenix fudged the numbers a bit). However, such an unsightly ranking is not indicative of the efforts of the Stars' marketing board and ticketing staff. In addition, the new owner has both allocated funds to advertise the team in all forms of media and remains committed to keeping tickets affordable for the average fan. Stars tickets remain the cheapest in hockey and there is no indication that a price hike is imminent despite the team's appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And to top it all off, this team works very hard to establish and maintain good relationships with customers like myself. My ticketing representative, Travis Gafford, made the process of getting my partial season tickets extremely easy and I highly recommend him to anyone interested in getting a package deal of any sort. In short, filling the AAC on a consistent basis is a lengthy process, but we're getting there. Pretty soon, crowds like those we saw on Modano night and during the series against Anaheim will be making our barn loud and proud more often than not.
Now, I can talk about upper management, new uniforms and ticket sales all I want, but none of these things contributed to the immediate success of the team on the ice this season. Not to worry, Tom Gaglardi didn't neglect to leave his mark on the on-ice product as well. In buying this team two years earlier, he was taking over a rebuild that was years in the making, but had yet to really get underway. The owner accelerated it in a big way at the end of the lockout-shortened 2013 season. See Part II of this post for the rest of the ongoing saga behind the scenes for the Dallas Stars.
Christian Bussler
@c_buss15
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