Dallas Stars Employees Accused of Profiting from Youth Hockey Families Through Hotel Booking Scheme

A USA TODAY investigation has uncovered a scheme involving three Dallas Stars employees who allegedly exploited their positions within the National Hockey League team and prominent youth hockey organizations to enrich themselves at the expense of thousands of families. Damon Boettcher, Lucas Reid, and Brad Buckland are accused of orchestrating a system where Stars-run youth hockey tournaments mandated out-of-town participants to book a minimum number of nights at specific hotels. Simultaneously, these employees operated a separate company, Stay2Play LLC, which acted as a middleman between the Stars and the hotels, skimming a portion of the revenue.

The alleged arrangement spanned four and a half years, from mid-2020 to December 2024. The investigation revealed that nearly half of the participants in 48 Stars-run tournaments originated from outside the host city and its surrounding region, totaling over 20,000 individuals. Unbeknownst to these participants, their hotel payments may have directly contributed to the personal enrichment of the three Stars employees.

Parents were reportedly unable to secure cheaper accommodations or explore alternative options like Airbnb rentals. Those who attempted to bypass the mandated hotel bookings faced the risk of their children being expelled from the tournament and their team forfeiting all games, without any reimbursement of entry fees, which typically ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 per team. Consequently, families were compelled to pay hundreds of dollars for hotel rooms, regardless of whether they desired or required them.

USA TODAY’s review of over 40 official tournament rulebooks, state business filings, travel agency registries, website archives, and invoices from two tournament hotels revealed that the hotels charged between $162 and $175 per night after taxes. Most tournaments enforced a minimum three-night stay, with some requiring four nights.

Stay-to-play requirements are a common practice in youth sports, often eliciting frustration from parents. Typically, the tournament host organization receives a kickback from the hotel booking revenue, and a third-party company coordinating with the hotels may also take a cut. However, the key distinction in this case is that the kickbacks allegedly flowed directly to the individuals responsible for organizing, overseeing, and setting the rules for the tournaments, creating multiple conflicts of interest.

Boettcher, Reid, and Buckland allegedly carried out this operation while serving as employees of the Dallas Stars. Furthermore, Reid held the position of president of the Texas Amateur Hockey Association (TAHA), the USA Hockey affiliate responsible for governing youth and adult hockey in Texas and Oklahoma, while Buckland served as secretary.

One of TAHA’s core responsibilities involves facilitating tournaments for its members, a task directly intertwined with the tournaments from which Reid and Buckland purportedly profited. While the president and secretary do not individually vote on tournament approval, they play a crucial role in setting the agenda for the association and voting on policy and procedure changes. For instance, a proposal to ban stay-to-play requirements would have to pass through them.

Parents whose membership fees support the nonprofit organization rightfully expect its board members to act in their best interests. However, two of those board members allegedly had a vested financial interest in ensuring families continued to pay for unwanted hotel accommodations.

As of January, the three employees no longer appeared to be employed by the Dallas Stars. However, Reid and Buckland remained on the board of the Texas Amateur Hockey Association.

Neither Reid nor Buckland responded to requests for comment. Boettcher, in an emailed statement, denied any wrongdoing, declined an interview, and did not address specific questions about the arrangement.

"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 read. "We have always attempted to have all parents and families be satisfied with the choices provided."

The Dallas Stars also declined to provide specific answers to questions about the arrangement.

"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," said Stars director of communications Joe Calvillo 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 stated that they did not consider the arrangement a conflict of interest under USA Hockey rules.

Legal experts consulted by USA TODAY raised concerns about potential self-dealing, which occurs when an individual with a fiduciary duty to an organization takes actions for personal gain. For some parents, this was seen as another instance of the Stars exploiting their children’s hockey ambitions.

"It’s a horrible mandate," said Shanna Stout, an Oklahoma parent whose son’s team participated 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 exerts significant control over youth hockey in Texas and Oklahoma, including access to ice rinks, Stout said families have little choice but to comply with their rules.

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

Unlike many other regions, amateur hockey in Texas is closely tied to 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 area, according to city contracts and county property records.

The Stars manage the house and high school leagues and also have involvement in the travel league. While the Texas Amateur Hockey Association and the Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League are ostensibly independent nonprofit entities, their boards have frequently included Stars executives.

Tournaments are a significant revenue source for the Stars rinks, known as StarCenters. Each year, they host roughly a dozen tournaments for youth and adult teams from across the United States and other countries. The largest tournaments attract 160 or more teams to Dallas.

For families, lodging represents the most substantial expense.

Stars tournaments have enforced stay-to-play mandates since at least 2019, according to website archives and official tournament rulebooks. These mandates require families to check in the day before the tournament begins and check out the day it ends, with the threat of disqualification for non-compliance.

Stay-to-play requirements have long been a source of frustration for hockey families, said Sten Carlson, an Austin-based coach whose daughter has played in several Stars tournaments. Hotel rates offered to tournament attendees often appeared higher than those available to the general public, a sentiment echoed by numerous parents.

Commuting from Austin would be more affordable and practical for Carlson’s family, particularly on days when their team had late game schedules. In one 2023 tournament, Carlson’s daughter’s team was required to book three nights, checking in on a Thursday, despite the team not playing until 12:30 p.m. on Friday.

"We could easily wake up at five and jump in the car, be up there by eight oclock," he said.

Carlson was unaware that the same individuals organizing the tournaments for the Stars were personally benefiting from them but 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."

The Stars previously partnered with Hilton, requiring tournament participants to book their stays at Hilton-branded properties. Hilton spokeswoman Mina Radman said these properties provided room blocks for Dallas Stars tournaments from 2017 to 2020.

This arrangement changed in July 2020 when the three Stars employees filed paperwork to conduct business in Texas as Stay2Play LLC.

Boettcher listed himself as president, according to business records. Reid, Buckland, and Boettcher’s wife, Cassandra Boettcher, were listed as vice presidents. Another for-profit company operated by the Boettchers claimed a 50% ownership stake in Stay2Play. Cassandra Boettcher did not respond to requests for comment.

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

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

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

Before the change, the Stars’ tournament website directed participants to book rooms through stay2play.online, a website featuring Stars and Hilton branding. Afterward, it redirected them to stay2playonline.com, which used a similar logo but lacked the Stars or Hilton branding.

The new website was registered to Stay2Play LLC.

Stay2Play remained the "exclusive provider" of hotel accommodations for Stars tournaments until January 2025, according to tournament rulebooks.

Around that time, two notable developments occurred: the Stars removed 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 currently 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," said Steven Stapleton, an attorney representing the Texas Amateur Hockey Association.

"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 four and a half 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, according to a USA TODAY analysis of online team rosters. Many participated in multiple tournaments.

Among them was Stout, who lives in Oklahoma City, roughly 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 100-plus teams in the Dallas Stars Travel Hockey League, including her son’s.

Hilton, the parent company of Embassy Suites, declined to provide specific answers to questions about the arrangement. Radman, its spokesperson, said 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, despite only playing games on two of the days.

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

The Stay2Play arrangement presented potential conflicts of interest, said Todd Haugh, director of the Institute for Corporate Governance and Ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

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

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

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

The deal must be disclosed to the organization’s highest officers, who must openly discuss it and independently decide whether to approve it. These 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, with both sides acting in their own interest without influencing or pressuring each other.

The organization must not only derive real value from the deal but also fair-market value and the deal must be in the financial interest of the organization, which cannot pay more than a competitor would charge.

For all these criteria to be met, "It would have to be a heck of a deal."

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

When asked whether these criteria were met, 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 said, "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."