Despite the fact that Dallas Stars won their game Thursday night against the Predators 2-0, team CEO Jim Lites decided that Friday morning was the time to go off about their subpar performance this season. Lites voiced his frustrations to various members of the media and railed about the team’s star players, with profligate use of profanity.
“They are f*cking horse-sh*t,” said Lites, as reported by The Athletic’s Sean Shapiro. “I don’t know how else to put it.”
The Stars are fourth in the Central Division and are underperforming despite the fact that they’re stronger on paper this year than in the past, which has frustrated team owner Tom Gaglardi.
According to Matthew DeFranks of the SportsDay, Lites says that Gaglardi “has allowed us to do everything we needed to do to be successful.”
Now that his team isn’t meeting his expectations, Gaglardi is not being quiet about it. Lites is “tired of getting emails from him saying ‘What the hell is going on with our best players?'”
The Stars’ two star players certainly do take up a large portion of their payroll. Per CapFriendly, Benn is making $9.5 million this season against the cap and $13 million in total salary, the third-highest in the NHL this season. He has 30 points in 38 games. Seguin signed an eight-year contract extension that kicks in next season worth $78.8 million over the life of the deal. He has 32 points in 38 games.
Both players said after practice Friday that they accept responsibility and know they need to work harder. “Not good enough,” Seguin said to The Athletic. “I’ve got to play better. I’m trying to do a job, and I haven’t had the right results.”
Despite the Ottawa Senators faux pas earlier in the year, the Stars’ debacle will likely take home 2018’s Most Embarrassing Ownership Moment Award.
Ottawa: “We’re a team”
Dallas: “Hold my fucking horseshit team”
— Sara Civ 🐳 (@SaraCivian) December 28, 2018
Steve Dangle pointed out that the publicity of Lites’s outburst is certainly purposeful and meant to motivate Benn and Seguin by calling them out publicly.
This is what's so weird to me. It's painfully obvious what they're doing. It's a planned, coordinated effort to publicly embarrass their two stars into playing better. https://t.co/9w2oMScd5E
— Steve Dangle Glynn (@Steve_Dangle) December 28, 2018
Lites certainly knew what he was doing. “I take a lesson from Bob Gainey here,” Lites said in The Athletic piece. “He said you’d be really successful in this league if you never gave a sh*t about being invited to players’ daughters’ weddings, and that’s what I think. I don’t give a f*ck. I’m a year-to-year guy and I’ll be damned if a guy who has been as good to me as Tom Gaglardi — as good to this franchise — isn’t getting results, and those players aren’t getting it done. I’m telling you, we are gonna run through a GM who does everything he can to make the team better because we aren’t getting results.”
