Victory Green: The Colour Of Money?

Despite journalism being defunded or pushed in one political direction or another, I still believe there are good investigative journalists willing to ask the hard questions without worrying about their career trajectories. Yes, they're becoming rarer each day as newspapers get turned into "digital copy", but even those who have moved to a new medium should be given the same ability to continue to dig deep into stories. One of those stories was published today in USA Today by Kenny Jacoby, and it really is worth your time when it comes to reading it because the Dallas Stars might be killing hockey.

I'll link the story here and give full credit to both Kenny Jacoby, the journalist, and to Chris Thomas, Executive Editor of Sports at USA Today. It isn't often that a national newspaper like USA Today goes after a well-funded NHL team over a local sports story, but Jacoby dug into his story about how the Dallas Stars have been monopolizing Texas youth hockey for over thirty years, and it's eye-opening to say the very least. Again, this story is worth reading so click the link.

Once you get past Jacoby's hook where the story starts, he makes it very clear that "the Stars spent decades turning what was once seen as a community good into a lucrative arm of their for-profit enterprise" by getting "seven local municipalities to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars building rinks that the Stars run and profit from". When you consider that Forbes's 2024 valuation of the Dallas Stars is $2 billion, something seems very off in that situation.

Jacoby adds that the Stars' ownership group also "bought up three more" rinks while "at least eight other independent ice hockey rinks went out of business" during that period of growth, and things start to come into focus as the Stars appear to be monopolizing the ownership of the Dallas area's hockey rinks. And that's a problem.

Jacoby began examining that monopoly with the 2023 situation at the start of the article. He writes of this monopolization,

"... the Stars informed all two-dozen local high school hockey clubs that the NHL team would be taking over their operations. No longer would the clubs set and collect their own fees, negotiate their own practice ice time, hire and pay their own coaches or sign sponsors without the Stars' approval. All players would now pay the Stars directly. All coaches would now be Stars hires and employees.

"Immediately, the Stars imposed a new fee structure that raised registration fees for many players while reducing the number of ice hours their teams received. All teams would now get two preseason games – one fewer than in years past – and no more than one hour of practice ice a week. The Stars later reduced the regular-season schedule from 18 games to 16. That's less than half the number of weekly ice hours that USA Hockey’s American Development Model recommends for teenagers to improve.

All of that should be setting off red flags and warning signs for people as the Stars literally took a league of high school teams - most of which have players who won't even play junior hockey - and completely turned it into a pay-to-play league run by and overseen by Dallas Stars employees. The end result was higher fees, less ice time, and less games for all the players in this league.

Furthermore, the Stars stopped honouring agreements that cities had with previously city-run rinks, they refused to refund monies to families who they overcharged, and they built new rinks that drove other rinks out of business. With the Stars building an empire in and around the Dallas area, leagues and teams eventually had to move to one of the Stars-owned or Stars-operated rinks where the Dallas Stars simply sat back and collected the profits while ice-time costs rose.

Honestly, the article opened my eyes to the cutthroat way that the Dallas Stars took advantage of their situation. Yes, they had money and brand power to be able to buy and operate rinks, but this should have lowered costs for families as the team worked to make hockey more accessible. Instead, it raised prices on everything as they were the only game in town, and anyone who complained about how the Stars were operating their little amateur hockey venture were pressured into silence or kicked out of Stars' facilities altogether.

Beyond that, Jacoby showed that the Stars also have significant influence at the Texas Amateur Hockey Association, which oversees amateur hockey in both Texas and Oklahoma, by having employees occupied "four of the 11 Texas Amateur Hockey Association voting board seats, including president and secretary" until recently, and that two of those four people used those positions for personal gain as reported by Jacoby in March. What the hell is going on in Texas?

I know reporting on hockey may not win Kenny Jacoby a Pulitzer Prize, but the work he's doing in exposing the corruption in Texas hockey is pretty remarkable. I, for one, think he's doing an abolutely necessary service for families in Texas when it comes to this reporting, and my hope is that he's allowed to continue following the money because it seems to be providing a lot of answers that were once secretive. If hockey in Texas is going to be better and more accessible for everyone, Jacoby's reporting is required.

Again, I beg you to read Jacoby's article linked at the top. Kenny Jacoby is doing Rick Westhead-like work with his hockey-in-Texas investigations, and the sport absolutely needs people like Jacoby and Westhead to continue to be its conscience as it moves forward.

Keep up the great work, Kenny! Excellent reporting!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!