A legacy: Tom Hick's impact on the Dallas Stars franchise

You could argue that Tom Hicks was the most important man in bringing a hockey championship to North Texas.

Yes, Bob Gainey made a plethora of great decisions as general manager. Yes, Ken Hitchcock was the right man at the right time as head coach. Yes, the players deserve the lion’s share of the credit for doing what they did at an intensely competitive time in the NHL.

But they wouldn’t have been able to do their jobs if Hicks didn’t see the business the way he did.

I remember when Gainey first dipped into the free agent market by signing Pat Verbeek and Dave Reid. The typically stoic GM simply said, “Sometimes, you have to spill a little milk.”

Gainey was actually raised differently, and it’s my belief he didn’t love the fact money had become so important in this league in the 1990s. But he also looked across the aisle and saw what they were doing in Detroit and Colorado and New York, and realized he had to do the same thing.

Gainey deserves a lot of credit for intertwining budget-conscious trades, as he made deals for Sergei Zubov, Darryl Sydor and Guy Carbonneau that probably were possible with new ownership. But it was Hicks’s money that opened the door for the trade that brought Joe Nieuwendyk to town.

Nieuwendyk was in a contract dispute with Calgary, and there were a ton of people who wanted to acquire his rights, but Gainey was the one who got the deal done. Well, Gainey and Hicks’s wallet.

After that came the aforementioned summer that brought Verbeek and Reid. Later, Gainey would also pick up Ed Belfour and Brett Hull as free agents to complete the eventual Cup-winning roster.

There was milk all over the Reunion Arena ice.

And people started seeing this team differently. In just a few short seasons, the Stars went from being an odd experiment to making complete sense. Ironically enough, Norm Green wanted to move the team to Anaheim, which probably would have helped him. But Disney stepped in there, and the Stars got detoured to the Lone Star State.

After the financial problems in Minnesota and the 1994 lockout, Green was squeezed. He had to sell. As luck would have it, Dallas also didn’t get purchased by businessman John Spano, who wasn’t as deep-pocketed as Hicks. That purchase would have been a disaster. Instead, the story goes, Hicks simply told the Stars to call him when a potential deal with Spano fell through.

That showed his personality. He was smart and calm and confident – and that transferred into the Stars’ personality. He trusted Gainey and team president Jim Lites. He had the Texas swagger of a man who went toe-to-toe with the wheeler-dealers from New York, and won a lot. He loved the high-stakes games of poker.

Hicks wasn’t a traditional hockey fan, but that was the perfect fit for the Stars. He helped build a following of non-traditional hockey fans and, in doing so, put Dallas in the middle of one of the great segments of NHL history.

Detroit spent money, Colorado spent money, Dallas spent money, and they all won because of it. Those series against the Avalanche were must-see TV. Those regular-season runs gave North Texas the sports excitement it needed at the time.

Dallas won seven division championships, a ton of playoff series and the 1999 Stanley Cup. That paid off big time for Hicks and his company. Now, you can argue he got distracted by the Texas Rangers and Liverpool FC, but that’s the price of doing business in the big time. And when the Stars were sold out of bankruptcy to Tom Gaglardi in 2013, there was a business template already in place – You have to spend money to make money.

Could Gainey have built this roster without that philosophy? Could Lites have created a hockey infrastructure that has been copied by a lot of Sunbelt cities? Could you have had as much fun as you have had falling in love with a foreign game that doesn’t seem very foreign anymore?

Probably not.

So as we remember Tom Hicks, give a big thanks to his bravado and his curiosity. He significantly changed the journey of a franchise and, in a lot of ways, an entire league.

That’s a pretty good legacy to leave behind.

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.