On the Stars and Mavericks suing each other and thoughts on Thomas Harley's new deal

Busy news day in Dallas yesterday, eh?

It would be irresponsible this morning to not write about the Dallas Stars.

Here’s a short list of things that happened on Oct. 29.

• The Dallas Mavericks sued the Dallas Stars.

• The Dallas Stars countersued the Dallas Mavericks.

• Thomas Harley signed an eight-year extension, with an AAV of $10.58 million.

• The Stars next arena could be in Plano, Texas, it was reported by the Dallas Morning News.

• The Stars shutout the Washington Capitals 1-0, preventing Alex Ovechkin from scoring his 900th career NHL goal in the process.

It’s a lot, and I think it’s worth giving some recognition here to Lia Assimakopoulos, who covers the Stars on a beat basis for the Dallas Morning News — while also handling college sports! — who ran laps around the rest of the Stars beat yesterday covering the myriad of on and off-ice stories.

In fact, my only gripe with Lia’s coverage of the Stars has been that she has to split her time between the Stars and college sports, which is more of a complaint for her bosses and not on her.

OK, let’s start with the Stars-Mavericks lawsuit and the countersuit.

As others have noted, the Stars and Mavericks have always been fine neighbors in the AAC. They weren’t close friends, but it was pretty much always civil and understanding, even if both jockeyed for priority dates.

Mark Cuban understood the relationship, he didn’t really care about the Stars, but he knew they were part of his ecosystem and he was at least respectful to the NHL franchise.

Things changed when Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont bought their majority stake in the team from Cuban. Primarily led by Dumont, who is the second most hated man in Mavericks world after Nico Harrison, the Mavericks have worked to exert more power over the past 24 months.