Red Wings GM Candidates: Scott White

Taking a close look at potential candidates

Credit: Maple Leafs Hot Stove

With Helene St James and Elliotte Friedman reporting that interviews are set to begin to fill Detroit’s Hockey Ops and GM vacancies, I decided to take a look at a few names who seem like logical candidates to get an interview slot. Today, we’ll take a look at Scott White, who served as GM of the Texas Stars for 16 seasons and is currently Assistant General Manager for the Dallas Stars.

White would fit the bill on two fronts: he has 20 years of relevant experience with a highly successful Dallas Stars organization, and he’s been in the running for several recent GM vacancies, ultimately getting passed over this offseason for openings in Toronto and Vancouver; so we know he’s looking to run his own franchise.

Scott White’s Background

In taking a closer look at Scott White, I realized he started his career as an assistant coach at Michigan Tech back in the mid to late 90s when the Hockeytown era was kicking into high gear. In total, he spent 5 years in Houghton, and while the Huskies didn't exactly cover themselves in glory during those years, at least we know White has spent time living in the state, if not the metro Detroit area.

The first 11 years of White’s career were behind the bench, with the final four being head coach for the Columbia Inferno.

It’s his work with the Stars organization where he transitioned to hockey ops, initially serving as the Director of Hockey Ops for the Iowa Stars. White made his move to full time work with the Dallas Stars in 2013, serving as Director of Hockey Operations before he was bumped up to Assistant General Manager back in 2016.

If you want a guy who has loads of hockey experience generally, and NHL operations experience in particular, White checks off all those boxes: 31 years in hockey, 20 years in pro hockey, and 12 years in an NHL front office.

He’s also worked alongside Jim Nill for 12 years, as the former Red Wings Assistant GM brought White over to Dallas’ NHL organization when he left Detroit. Nill obviously had a very long tenure in Detroit under Ken Holland, which may serve to provide an additional layer of comfort with White as a candidate to lead the Red Wings.

Finally, he’s clearly interested in a GM role, as he’s interviewed recently with the Canucks and the Maple Leafs. With White submitting his CV for multiple GM openings, that suggests Jim Nill has no plans to retire anytime soon or that White has reason to believe he’s not going to be promoted to that position in Dallas. The same thing happened in Detroit, where Nill — sensing Ken Holland had no interest in retirement — eventually moved on to run his own franchise.

Were Scott White to be hired as the next GM, it wouldn’t raise many concerns given his long background working under one of the more successful GMs. While his background wouldn’t guarantee he would be successful in Detroit, it would be hard to criticize the decision to hire him.

Scott White’s Track Record

The easiest way to judge White’s tenure is his work as the GM for the Texas Stars, where he was responsible for running the entire organization.

White ran the AHL affiliate from 2009 through 2024, and over that time the organization won 3 conference championships and 1 Calder Cup. Generally speaking, the AHL Stars have been a highly successful franchise, winning 60% or more of their games in 6 of those seasons, with the 2013 -14 Calder Cup wining team winning 69.7% of their games. In total, they missed the playoffs 3 times and had 7 seasons where they won at least one playoff round.

He’s capable of building a competitive team over the long haul, which is the most important trait for a general manager.

In reviewing what Stars fans have to say about Scott White, he seems to have an eye for undrafted free agents, with an emphasis on college players and players out of the state of Michigan. That makes a lot of sense when you are building an AHL roster, the big question is how well will that translate to the NHL?

From a player development standpoint, there are players like Thomas Harley and Jason Robertson who refined their games in the AHL before becoming major contributors in the NHL. Harley played 131 games in the AHL before becoming a full time NHL’er. Robertson was a quick study, only spending 60 games in the AHL before making the move to the big club. Mavrik Bourque played 141 games in the AHL before graduating to the Dallas Stars.

Wyatt Johnston looks to be the exception, as he never played a single game for the AHL affiliate.

Bottom line, White’s track record with the Texas Stars is encouraging. He built a team that was competitive over a 16 year period, and high level NHL talent successfully completed their professional development while playing for his organization.

White’s Analytical Background

This is going to be the most difficult part for us to figure out as there aren’t many tea leaves to parse. To be upfront, this is mostly feelings-based, but I get the sense White is more of a relationship guy given his long history in hockey, with a good eye for talent. This is most obvious in his free agent signings and his success in bringing on guys who have spent part of their development time in the state of Michigan.

While I’ve read quite a bit from Stars fans who credit him with the Dallas Stars organization’s success in scouting talent from Michigan, it’s also worth pointing out the long track record Jim Nill had in Michigan before accepting the Stars GM role.

Nill also brought several other guys with ties to Michigan with him when he moved to Dallas, including Mark Leach, Joe McDonnell and David Kolb.

But as I’ve mentioned previously, White was the guy responsible for running the Texas Stars, and there’s no question he was successful in that role.

Then there’s the fact he was one of two finalists for the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager opening, with John Chayka ultimately chosen over him. Chayka has a well-established identity as being a data-centric general manager, and while I may be reading too much into this one fact, it does suggest the Toronto organization favored Chayka’s background over White’s more traditional skillset.

Finally, Dallas Stars fans tend to view Mark Janko as being the more ‘Moneyball’ type of Assistant General Manager in the Stars organization and expect him to get poached at some point in the near future. For better or worse, the hiring of Chayka and Sunny Mehta this offseason indicate the league is finally following baseball and beginning to lean on guys who have more analytical chops rather than traditional candidates who worked their way up the ranks and are heavily influenced by a mentor.

While it would be naive to believe everyone with a background in analytical strategic planning and team building is going to be successful, we have enough of a track record with their success in MLB for NHL franchises to finally learn that recycling the old boys network isn’t always the best path to success.

Is Scott White a Good Choice?

Let me start off this section by saying if White is the guy, it would be difficult to criticize the decision: he has a long track record in pro hockey, he’s been a successful GM at the AHL level, and he’s worked alongside one of the best GMs in the league. You could do a LOT worse than hiring Scott White as your next general manager.

He’s much more qualified than Shawn Horcoff and orders of magnitude more qualified than Kris Draper.

The answer here on whether Scott White is Detroit’s next GM is going to depend on a few factors. With Helene St James reporting that Chris Ilitch is looking for an analytics-based hockey ops person who would fit in line with his hires of Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg for the Detroit Tigers, I don’t think Scott White would be a slam dunk hire.

However I could see a case where Ilitch would hire an analytics person to oversee hockey operations, and that person in turn hiring Scott White as the general manager. With Elliotte Friedman suggesting current Tigers’ GM Jeff Greenberg could be a dark horse candidate for the hockey ops role, he may find a candidate like White a good fit as his general manager given his 30+ years in hockey and 10+ years of NHL experience.

Again, leaning heavily on my feelings, I think Scott White isn’t the guy who will ultimately get the job. First off, the organization just parted ways with a proven guy with a traditional hockey ops background who was a protege of a former Red Wings front office exec in Steve Yzerman. When you consider Ilitch’s front office hires with the Tigers and their subsequent success, I think he will have a strong inclination to go with someone with a similar background.

While some fans are legit skeptical about someone like Jeff Greenberg with precious little NHL experience filling the hockey ops role in Detroit, there are several decent options for analytics-driven candidates who have a background in pro hockey.

So while Scott White should absolutely be viewed as a strong candidate, I don’t think he’s the hire to fill Detroit’s hockey ops role.