Dallas Stars execs used positions to profit off youth hockey tourneys

Three Dallas Stars employees used their positions with the National Hockey League team and atop prominent youth hockey nonprofit organizations to profit at thousands of families’ expense, a USA TODAY investigation found.

The employees – Damon Boettcher, Lucas Reid and Brad Buckland – organized dozens of Stars-run youth hockey tournaments that required out-of-town participants to book rooms for a minimum number of nights at select hotels. At the same time, the employees separately ran a company, Stay2Play LLC, that acted as a middleman between the Stars and the hotels, taking a cut of the revenue. 

The arrangement went on for 4 ½ years. Nearly half the participants at 48 Stars-run tournaments from mid-2020 to December 2024 hailed from outside the host city and its surrounding region, the investigation found. Each of those more than 20,000 participants’ hotel payments may have unknowingly padded the bank accounts of the three Stars employees.

Parents couldn’t find a cheaper hotel or split an Airbnb. Those who tried to skirt the requirement risked their children being kicked out of the tournament and the forfeiture of all their team’s games – without a refund of entry fees, usually between $1,000 and $2,000 per team. Instead, they were forced to pay hundreds of dollars for hotel rooms they did not always want or need. 

USA TODAY reviewed more than 40 official tournament rulebooks detailing the requirements, state business filings, travel agency registries, website archives and invoices from two tournament hotels that charged $162 to $175 per night after taxes. Most tournaments required a minimum three-night stay; some required four. 

Stay-to-play requirements are somewhat common across youth sports and maddening to many parents. The organization hosting the tournament usually receives a kickback from the hotel booking revenue, and sometimes a third-party company that coordinates with the hotels also takes a cut. The difference in this case is that the kickbacks went to the same people tasked with organizing, overseeing and shaping the rules for the tournaments, as opposed to an independent entity. And those people had multiple conflicts of interest.

Boettcher, Reid and Buckland carried out the operation not only while they were Stars employees, but while Reid served as president of the nonprofit Texas Amateur Hockey Association – the USA Hockey affiliate that acts as the governing body overseeing youth and adult hockey in Texas and Oklahoma – and Buckland served as secretary.

One of the association’s primary responsibilities is facilitating tournaments for its members – the same tournaments from which Reid and Buckland personally profited – by validating that they comply with USA Hockey rules. Although the president and secretary don’t personally vote on which tournaments to approve, they set the agenda for the association and vote on changes to policies and procedures. A proposal for a new rule barring stay-to-play requirements, for instance, would have to go through them.

Parents whose membership fees support the nonprofit expect its board members to act in their interests. Yet two of those board members had a financial incentive to ensure families kept paying for unwanted hotel stays.

As of January, the three employees appear to no longer work for the Stars. Reid and Buckland remain on the Texas Amateur Hockey Association’s board.

Reid and Buckland did not respond to phone or email messages seeking comment. In an emailed statement, Boettcher denied any wrongdoing. He declined to be interviewed and did not answer specific questions about the arrangement from USA TODAY.

“Our goal, as an independent company, when the lessening threat of Covid finally allowed restoration of more normal activity was to facilitate families participating in tournaments in North Texas venues,” Boettcher’s statement said. “We have always attempted to have all parents and families be satisfied with the choices provided.”

The Stars also declined to answer specific questions about the arrangement from USA TODAY.

“The Dallas Stars are no longer affiliated with Stay2Play LLC and plan to reinstate a new stay-to-play provider for our tournaments this fall,” Stars director of communications Joe Calvillo said in an emailed statement. “The Dallas Stars are committed to providing the best possible experience for all players, teams and families who participate in our leagues and tournaments.”

USA Hockey officials did not respond to requests for comment. Attorneys representing the Texas Amateur Hockey Association said in an email that they do not consider the arrangement a conflict of interest under USA Hockey rules.

The conflicts of interest raise concerns about potential self-dealing, which is when a person with a fiduciary duty to an organization takes an action for personal gain, legal experts who spoke to USA TODAY said. For some parents, it was just the latest example of the Stars capitalizing on their children’s hockey aspirations.

“It’s a horrible mandate,” said Shanna Stout, whose son’s team in Oklahoma played in several Stars tournaments in Dallas. “Hockey is an incredibly expensive sport, and when they see an opportunity to make money off of parents that are stuck in the South, there’s no other rink.”

Because the $2 billion NHL team controls many facets of youth hockey in Texas and Oklahoma, including much of the ice, Stout said families have little choice but to play by its rules.

“You kind of feel like you’re stuck in a monopoly,” she said. “And they take advantage of it.”

Youth tournaments drive big money, frustration

Unlike most parts of the country, amateur hockey in Texas runs through the state’s NHL team.

The Dallas Stars and the team’s executives own or operate eight of the 11 ice rinks in the Dallas-Ft. Worth region, city contracts and county property records show.

The Stars run the house and high school leagues and have their hands in the travel league. Although the Texas Amateur Hockey Association and Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League are ostensibly independent nonprofit entities, their boards have often been filled with Stars bigwigs.

Tournaments are a major cash cow for the Stars’ rinks, called StarCenters. Every year, they host around a dozen tournaments for youth and adult teams across America and other countries. The largest ones bring 160 or more teams to Dallas.

For families, the biggest expense, by far, is lodging.

Stars tournaments have had stay-to-play mandates since at least 2019, website archives and official tournament rulebooks show. They require families to check in the day before the tournament begins and check out the day it ends. If they don’t, they risk disqualification.

Stay-to-play requirements have long frustrated hockey families, said Sten Carlson, a coach in Austin whose daughter has played in several Stars tournaments. The hotel rates offered to tournament attendees often seem higher than those for the general public, he said – a sentiment expressed by multiple parents who spoke to USA TODAY.

It would be cheaper and more practical for Carlson’s family to commute from Austin, he said, particularly on days when their team isn’t scheduled for an early game. For a tournament in 2023, Carlson’s daughter’s team was forced to book three nights, checking in on a Thursday, even though the team didn’t play until 12:30 p.m. on Friday.

“We could easily wake up at five and jump in the car, be up there by eight o’clock,” he said.

Carlson said he did not know that the same people who organized the tournaments for the Stars were personally profiting from them – but he was not surprised.

“I think we all sort of suspected something like that, to be honest,” he said. “Any time you have got a large amount of money moving through places, somebody always seems to want to get their hands on it.”

A new company – and subtle change

The Stars and Hilton used to have a partnership that required tournament participants to book their stays at Hilton-branded properties. Hilton spokeswoman Mina Radman said those properties, many of which are independently owned and operated, provided room blocks for Dallas Stars tournaments from 2017 to 2020.

That changed in July 2020 when the three Stars employees, whose job responsibilities included putting on the tournaments, filed paperwork to do business in Texas as Stay2Play LLC.

Boettcher listed himself as the president, business records show. Reid, Buckland and Boettcher’s wife, Cassandra Boettcher, were vice presidents. Another for-profit company run by the Boettchers claimed a 50% ownership stake in Stay2Play. Cassandra Boettcher also did not respond to phone or email messages from USA TODAY.

Damon Boettcher, at the time, served as the Stars’ vice president of StarCenter facilities. Reid was the Stars’ vice president of amateur sports and partnership development, as well as Texas Amateur Hockey Association’s president.

Buckland served as the Stars’ tournament director and as secretary of both the association and the travel league, which required member teams to play in at least one Stars tournament a year.

From July 2020 forward, Stay2Play replaced Hilton in the official Stars tournament rulebooks as the “exclusive provider” of hotel accommodations.

Before the change, the Stars’ tournament website directed participants to book rooms through stay2play.online, a website adorned with Stars and Hilton branding. After, it instead directed them to stay2playonline.com, which uses a similar logo but lacks the Stars or Hilton branding.

The new site was registered to Stay2Play LLC.

‘They’ll hold you over a barrel’

Stay2Play remained the “exclusive provider” of hotel accommodations for Stars tournaments until January 2025, tournament rulebooks show.

Two significant developments took place around that month. The Stars deleted the minimum-stay requirements and all references to Stay2Play from the rulebook for its upcoming MLK Invitational tournament. And Boettcher, Reid and Buckland were removed from the Stars’ online front office directory.

None of the three still work for the Stars, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Calvillo, the Stars spokesperson, said the organization does not comment on “personnel matters.”

Reid and Buckland are still listed on the Texas Amateur Hockey Association and Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League websites as members of the nonprofits’ executive boards.

None of the 11 members of the association’s board of directors or the travel league’s president, Paul Freudigman, responded to requests for comment.

Reid and Buckland “have dedicated countless hours to building one of the most cohesive districts in the nation,” Steven Stapleton, a Michigan-based attorney who represents the Texas Amateur Hockey Association, said in an email.

“Many TAHA members are engaged in other professional endeavors,” the email said. “This does not preclude any of them from running for and serving the TAHA community.”

During the 4 ½ years in which Stay2Play was the exclusive hotel provider, 48 Stars tournaments attracted more than 12,000 different players, coaches and team members from out-of-town teams, a USA TODAY analysis of online team rosters found. Many participated in more than one tournament.

Among them was Stout, who lives in Oklahoma City about a three-hour drive from Dallas. She paid $512 for a three-night stay at the Embassy Suites for the Stars’ Labor Day Kickoff tournament – a mandatory tournament for all of the more than 100 teams in the Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League, including her son’s.

Hilton, the parent company for Embassy Suites, declined to answer specific questions about the arrangement from USA TODAY. Radman, its spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that Hilton “has never had a relationship with Stay2Play.”

Stout’s son’s team played its first game of the tournament at 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, but tournament rules required them to check into the hotel on Friday night. They stayed for three nights, even though the team played games on only two of the days.

“It’s hockey in the South,” she said. “They’ll hold you over a barrel, that’s for sure.”

Conflicts of interest raise concern

The Stay2Play arrangement was rife with potential conflicts of interest, said Todd Haugh, director of the Institute for Corporate Governance and Ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, who researches corporate compliance, organizational wrongdoing and white-collar crime.

Employees have a duty of loyalty to their organization, he said, meaning they cannot engage in self-dealing, take opportunities away from the organization, or set up a company to overcharge or otherwise take advantage of it.

Reid and Buckland, he said, legally owed the same fiduciary duty to the Stars. And they owed an ethical duty to the membership of the nonprofits they helped run: the Texas Amateur Hockey Association and Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League. Families who collectively pay those organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual membership fees, Haugh said, “have an expectation that the board members are being good stewards of their funds.”

Not all conflicts of interest are inherently illegal or unethical, Haugh said. But to be above board, he said, several criteria must be met.

The deal must be disclosed to the highest officers of the organization, who must openly discuss it and independently decide whether to approve it, he said. Such discussions should be documented in meeting minutes, and any parties with a personal stake in the outcome cannot vote on it.

The deal must be as “arms-length” as possible, Haugh said – both sides must act in their own interest, without influencing or pressuring each other. 

Additionally, the organization must not only get real value from the deal but also fair-market value. The deal must be in the financial interest of the organization, which can’t pay more for it than a competitor would charge.

For all those criteria to be met, Haugh said, “It would have to be a heck of a deal.”

“If they just set up a company so they could get fees,” he said, “that obviously would not be on the up-and-up.” 

Asked whether those criteria were met in this case, the Stars and the Texas Amateur Hockey Association attorneys declined to answer. USA Hockey spokespeople and Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League board members did not respond to questions.

Stapleton, the attorney representing the association, said in an email that “there is no conflict of interest implicated by any TAHA Board Member with respect to TAHA operated and administered tournaments, as that term is defined by USA Hockey’s Conflict of Interest policy.’ He added that the association itself did not contract with Stay2Play LLC.

USA Hockey policy states that conflicts of interest “exist when an individual’s activities or relationships present the potential for improper personal gain or advantage, or an adverse effect on the interests of USA Hockey.”

One example it lists is when individuals have a financial interest in a decision they make in their capacity acting on behalf of USA Hockey.

Another is when such a person has a client that owns or operates a facility being considered as the host of a USA Hockey event. 

Kenny Jacoby is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY who covers issues in sports, higher education and law enforcement. Contact him by email at kjacoby@usatoday.com. Follow him on X @kennyjacoby or Bluesky @kennyjacoby.bsky.social.