Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi excited after active offseason

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Since he bought the Dallas Stars for close to $240 million in 2011 Tom Gaglardi has been one of the more hands-on owners in the NHL.

Even while living in Vancouver, Gaglardi is a somewhat constant presence in Dallas at games and practices.

This past week Gaglardi — at least to the best of my knowledge — was the only NHL owner watching his prospects live here in Traverse City. Throughout the first three days of the tournament Gaglardi and his father, Bob Gaglardi, watched prospect games closely and often picked the brains of Stars scouts in attendance.

The prospect games may not have the desired results, the Stars are 0-2-1, but Gaglardi is excited about how his NHL that will open training camp later on Friday in Cedar Park.

“We are. Made some changes and we’ll look a little different, and hopefully we addressed some weaknesses,” Gaglardi said. “And hopefully we are headed in the right direction, so I’m excited.”

That’s a nice feeling for Gaglardi, especially after a disappointing 2016-17 season where the Stars dropped from the top of the Western Conference and were out of the playoff race in January.

“My desire was to make sure that we were in the mix and a playoff team every year,” Gaglardi said. “Last year was a real setback for us, so we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I think we’ve got a good young core of people here and we expect to be in the playoffs for many years in a row.”

That ownership mentality created a bit of a mandate for Stars management this offseason. Their had to be amends for past mistakes, and Gaglardi said trades for Ben Bishop and Marc Methot, combined with free agency signings of Alexander Radulov and Martin Hanzal signaled the Stars are a contender again.

“I think that we improved a goalie, improved on defense, and we improved on a couple two, three forwards that are hard to play against,” Gaglardi said. “We wanted to get tougher to play against and get tougher at killing penalties and I think the guys that we added are gonna going to really up the compete and the toughness and I’m excited about that. I think we improved all facets of our game.”

Gaglardi isn’t the only one with that opinion. According to the latest odds from Bovada the Stars are tied for the third-best odds (12-to-1) to win the Stanley Cup, while a poll of NHL players at the annual media days in New York revealed Dallas was the most-likely under the radar team to hoist the cup.

So how involved is Gaglardi in management decisions?

“I’m just part of the conversation, but the end of the day it’s the staff decision what to do. But I enjoy being part of the discussions and the analysis, and having a seat at the table,” Gaglardi said. “I like to keep up to speed on everything. I like that. But I don’t know the players as well as the scouts do or the management, so they’re the ones that should be making the decisions and they do.”