The Dallas Stars have fervent hockey fans ... in Dallas. Why not in Fort Worth?
The Dallas Stars began their latest hunt for another Stanley Cup on Saturday, marking their fourth consecutive playoff appearance and their sixth appearance in seven years.
Since moving to Dallas from Minnesota 31 years ago, the Stars have been to the playoffs 20 times, gone to the Stanley Cup Finals three times and won the cup once. Not a bad track record, but the Stars remain the under-the-radar team among the four major sports franchises in the Metroplex, and that’s especially true in the “Westoplex.” So what gives?
How many Stars hockey fans are in Fort Worth?
Tarrant County is home to about 3,000 Stars season ticket holders and single-game ticket buyers.
That’s a modest number, but there’s an untapped market of nearly half a million people whom the Stars have identified as potential fans. For an organization with an arena that seats 18,500 people, that’s a pretty good target base, especially when you consider the fact that NHL teams derive around 44% of their annual revenue from ticket sales and another $840 million from concessions, souvenirs and parking.
One of the main ways the Stars are looking to grow the fanbase around Fort Worth is through investments in youth and amateur hockey. The club operates two Children’s Health StarCenter locations in Tarrant County — one in Euless and the other in Mansfield — with a new one opening in spring 2026 in Northlake, in an area of neighboring Denton County that has experienced exponential growth in recent years.
The 225,000-square-foot StarCenter Multisport Northlake will have basketball courts, volleyball courts and pickleball courts in addition to two regulation ice rinks in the hopes that it will become a destination for athletes of all ages and interests in that area. The Stars anticipate more than 1 million annual visitors.
Already, the StarCenters in Euless and Mansfield are home to youth hockey leagues, adult leagues and hockey academies, in addition to hosting open-skate time for anyone with an itch to step onto the ice.
Dan Stuchal, the chief operations officer for the StarCenters and one of the guys who came from Minnesota with the team back in 1993, said giving people that tangible experience of lacing up skates and holding a stick is key to driving interest in the professional game, and the opportunity to do that didn’t really exist before the Stars arrived in Dallas.
“When we moved to town, there was one regulation sheet of ice,” said Stuchal.
Today, the Stars operate 18 rinks across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
“And they’re full,” Stuchal added with pride, giving credit to Stars leadership over the past three decades for making inroads with local communities.
“We had to grow our own fans,” Stuchal said. “People here didn’t grow up with this sport, so we needed to provide the ice to get people to experience the game and fall in love with it, and that’s happened.”
Six area high school hockey teams from the Birdville, Keller, Grapevine/Colleyville, Southlake Carroll, Arlington and Mansfield school districts now compete at the two Tarrant County StarCenters, something that was unimaginable in the early 90s.
The player-to-fan pipeline
Youth participation is the gateway to long-term, multi-generational hockey fandom, Stuchal said. Kids who play hockey tend to follow the NHL, and they get their parents into it. Those same kids grow up to become ticket-holders themselves, and then they bring their own children along.
Since one of the knocks on hockey is that it’s expensive to play, thanks to all the equipment required, the Stars run Rookies programs at several StarCenters where players across all age groups can give the game a try using borrowed gear. If a player decides to keep going, he or she can purchase the equipment at a discounted rate, Stuchal said.
Perhaps surprisingly, Fort Worth has something of a hockey heritage that predates the Stars and the StarCenters. It was home to the Wings, a Detroit Red Wings minor league affiliate, from 1967 to 1973. The Wings continued in 1973 under the New York Islanders, and then changed names in 1974 to the Fort Worth Texans. In 1979, the Colorado Rockies became the Texans’ parent team until 1982.
Then the Fire, in an independent Central Hockey League, competed at the Fort Worth Convention Center from 1992 to 1999.
But no NHL franchise had ever taken a grassroots approach to gaining fans in Tarrant County like the Stars have. There’s even been discussions about playing preseason games at the Dickies Arena, though scheduling conflicts have kept that from happening. The Stars have played one preseason game in Fort Worth, at the Convention Center in 1993.
The ‘Fort Worth Stars’?
According to reports, if the Dallas Mavericks follow through with plans to move into a new basketball-only arena in the next few years, it could force the Stars to explore options outside the American Airlines Center.
Stuchal didn’t comment on that when asked about it, nor did he address the possibility of the Stars one day calling Fort Worth home, but it’s fuel for debate: Could the Westoplex support an NHL franchise?
That’s probably a long shot. For now, the Stars say they are committed to Dallas. But at the rate hockey is growing in Tarrant County, it’s not hard to at least imagine seeing a bit more Victory Green, the Stars’ signature color, around Fort Worth. It pairs well with boots.
This story was originally published April 19, 2025 at 6:00 PM with the headline "The Dallas Stars have fervent hockey fans ... in Dallas. Why not in Fort Worth?."