It's a three-peat for Jim Nill.
The Dallas Stars executive made history on Friday night, winning the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award for a third consecutive time, becoming the only person since the creation of the award in 2009 to do so.
Nill helped lead the Stars to another impressive season, building a squad that finished with a 50-26-6 record — good for the fifth-best record in the NHL — and brought them to the Western Conference Finals for a third-straight season.
The standout moment for Nill and the Stars, however, came at the trade deadline when he swung a blockbuster deal for superstar forward Mikko Rantanen, becoming the third team to employ the Finn last season after a prior shocking trade to the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Stars parted ways with two conditional first-round picks in 2026 and 2028, third-round picks in 2026 and 2027 and young centre Logan Stankoven. But in return, they got a winger in Rantanen who tallied nine goals and 13 assists in 18 playoff games with Dallas, netting back-to-back hat tricks in the process.
Over the 2024-25 season, the Stars also acquired defenceman Cody Ceci and centre Mikael Granlund in a deal with the San Jose Sharks, and added players like goaltender Casey DeSmith and defencemen Matt Dumba and Ilya Lyubushkin in free agency.
The only other executive to win the award more than once is former New York Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello, who won after the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.
