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https://starsthoughts.com/2025/01/27/the-end-of-a-dallas-stars-musical-tradition-the-story-of-where-the-darkness-came-from-and-why-it-may-have-suddenly-disappeared/

The End of a Dallas Stars Musical Tradition: The Story of Where the “Darkness” Came From, and Why It May Have Suddenly Disappeared

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Until last month, Dallas Stars fans all knew what to expect after the opposing team scored a goal at Stars home games.

The crowd would groan, sure. Some people might even shout in digust. Players would occasionally whack their sticks in frustration, perhaps tossing a word or two toward the referees on their way back to the bench.

But over all of that, music would play after the opposition scored. Specifically, this music, which is commonly referred to as “Darkness” thanks to its surprising links to a local sports radio station that we’ll discuss later on:

Any Stars fan recognizes that music and the heartbreak that usually accompanied it. The tune would play for a few seconds while the opposing team celebrated with a pesky red light above the Stars’ goal, and it would tell you that yes, this was a bummer of a moment, and everyone here knows it. It wasn’t music that made you feel good—nothing can take away the sting of surrendering a goal other than scoring the next one—but then, it wasn’t designed to. That music was intended to capture the experience of suffering a goal-against, not to pretend it didn’t happen. Stars fans knew that when you heard that music, you mourned together.

But last month, in December 2024, that music suddenly disappeared.

As recently as December 14, you still heard the “Darkness” music play after Jordan Kyrou’s goal in the Stars’ overtime victory against St. Louis. But in the Stars’ next game, on December 16 against Washington, the music was gone. Instead, when Wasington scored, you heard only a guitar riff from Blink 182. That musical drop had previously played after the “Darkness” music had run for a bit, but now, the old “Darkness” music was gone altogether, in the middle of a homestand, and it hasn’t returned since.

Against Carolina on Tuesday, for instance, you heard a short, upbeat track play right after Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s first goal. Another short guitar riff played after his second. Neither was preceded by “Darkness.”

Initially, I figured this was part of experimentation, as Dallas Stars games have long been famous for their edgy, innovative game presentation, and that often means changing out the old for the new. That sort of tinkering can sometimes mean rejecting homogenous trends across the industry in favor of developing a specific Dallas Stars experience, like the Stars did a decade ago when then-DJ Michael Gruber changed their goal song from more generic tunes like “The Whip” or “Rock ‘n’ Roll (Part 2)”, which had been used by many other teams, to the distinctive “Puck Off” by Pantera, a tune created specifically for the Dallas Stars by the late Vinnie Paul. It was a change that was widely praised, as the song that was formerly only used for player introductions is now played (hopefully) during the most celebratory moments of every game. A song with history like that deserves a spotlight.

Change happens, and sometimes for the better. But the more I looked into this change, the odder it seemed. After all, this music has been around for a long time, so you’d think that if the Stars were going to dispense with it, they’d have done so at the beginning of the season with a more cohesive plan in place, rather than start with the traditional music, only to abruptly switch it out in the middle of a homestand for an assortment of other choices.

I had heard a few weeks ago that this decision wasn’t made by their current Music Director, Jonathon “DJ Shippy” Shipman, or by any of the other game presentation staff. And to be clear, that’s not based on anything the game presentation folks have told me. In fact, the folks I’ve spoken with have all been very above-board in referring me to official channels up the ladder, declining to speak about the change themselves. That in itself was surprising to me, as changing a musical drop wouldn’t normally be so big of a deal that folks wouldn’t talk about it. Most folks I’ve spoken to who work with the team take a great deal of pride in what they do, and it’s often a delight to hear about how they’ve put their passion into their role to make the experience as memorable as possible. But in this case, no dice.

Last week, I reached out to the team directly, and on Thursday, a team spokesperson responded regarding the disappearance of the “Darkness” music. Here is what they said:

“As an organization, we are constantly tweaking and trying new things with our game presentation. The decision was made to do something different, and we’re going to move forward with that.”

In other words, it sure seems like the “Darkness” isn’t coming back any time soon.

And the way it happened seems a bit of a shame, because it turns out that this music is one of the oldest Dallas Stars traditions there is. So, let’s dig into where it came from, and why it might have disappeared so suddenly.

The Origins of the “Darkness” Music

I’m not exaggerating about this being an old tradition, by the way. You can go back 18 years, when you were hearing that music in the 2007 playoffs (at 2:41 of the below video):

And you go could back even further, too. In fact, I believe you can faintly hear it even on the quieter Reunion Arena sound system back in 1994, if you listen closely:

Even as recently as 2019, it was widely known that this music went back to the Stars’ very first season at Reunion Arena, as Gruber said when asked about this music on Reddit back in 2019. (By the way, “Grubes” is one of the very good ones out there, and you should check out his new podcast.)

So, it was generally accepted that this music had been around a long, long time. But when you really want to get the whole story, you have to go to the source. So I reached out to the man himself: Ty Wubker, the original “music guy” for the Stars from 1993 until 2006—a period he incidentally referred to as “the best years of my life.”

“First, it hurts that they gave up on the Darkness music,” said Wubker, a Wisconsin native who grew up a “huge” North Stars fan.

Wubker was living in Dallas working at KZPS in 1993 when one of his friends was interning with the Stars. That friend got Wubker an interview with the team when they were looking for someone to run the music, and he ended up with the job, in all of its…well, “glory” may not be quite the right word. I’ll let Wubker take over from here:

(Author’s Note: I’ve lightly edited the below quotes for clarity and style.)

“When I started at Reunion that first season,” said Wubker, “the Press Box was not yet complete before the season started. They built a shanty-like hut just to the side of the press box, and it was very unstable-looking. The music was run off what, at the time, was probably a top-of-the-line system which was called ENCO.”

“The fun thing about that is that in order to load music into it. It had to be done in real time. So I would show way before games and load music into it, because I was starting from scratch. The other thing is that we also played stuff off Carts. Back then before the technology that we know now (and also working in radio), Carts looked like 8-Tracks. There were different lengths of Carts. Before I started with the Stars they played a lot of their music off of these Cart machines. There were two, so that songs and/or instrumental pieces could be mixed.”

“So as the pre-season and regular season went on that first year, I would use some of these Carts that had charges and drumbeats. Along the way, I stumbled upon this Cart that was not upbeat or anything. Kinda depressing. After a while, I thought of the idea of playing this when the other team scored. And after a while it took off.”

So, there you have it. Wubker just happened across a random tape, and it sounded like a good fit for a specific moment in hockey games, so that’s what he used it for. And it stuck for the next three decades.

“It was part of these Carts that were part of the library that were used for Mavs and Sidekicks games previous to the Stars’ move to Dallas,” added Wubker. “Once I started with the Stars, I took over Mavs and Sidekicks games, as well as any event at Reunion Arena.”

Wubker also confirmed that the nickname “Darkness” for the music was coined by Texas Radio Hall-of-Famer Mike Rhyner, formerly of KTCK “The Ticket,” along with his former co-host Greg Williams. The duo adapted the tune for deployment as a musical drop for announcements on the Ticket, so fans who have never even seen a Stars game may still be familiar with the tune from listening to local radio.

While we may never know what musician originally composed the theme on that “cart”, we do know that it was there waiting for team at Reunion Arena, waiting to be discovered. And for over 30 years, from that inaugural 1993-94 season all the way to the halfway mark of this 2024-25 campaign, that quirky, unique Dallas Stars tradition endured.

So, why did it suddenly stop?

The Day the Music Died: a Theory

To be clear, this final section is just my speculation based on what I could gather from other sources and context clues.

Here’s my tentative conclusion: I don’t think the Blues game on December 14 was what killed the “Darkness” music. Because I think the decision was made after the previous game, when the Stars got smoked 4-1 by Nashville two days prior:

To jog your memory, that’s the “inexcusable” game Jamie Benn described afterwards as “pretty ugly.” It’s the game about which Miro Heiskanen said, “They were a lot better,” which is scathing crticism by his standards. And Pete DeBoer summarized that one as, “Not close to competitive enough. Disappointing. It was everybody. Our Video Review coaches were our best players tonight by far.”

So, yeah. I’m sure you remember it now, and I’m sorry you had to. But for our purposes today, here’s what I’m thinking: I could see somebody getting very sick of hearing this music over and over again in that game (six times, in fact, as two other Nashville goals were disallowed upon review). And I could see somebody getting so annoyed by it that they would issue a mandate to get rid of the music that kept playing after every ugly and disappointing goal.

Who was that someone? Well, I personally can’t see any hockey ops people caring about the music enough to demand a change, especially when all the game presentation folks are well-aware of the history and tradition associated with the music that goes back to the 1993-94 season.

Additionally, the high degree of tact exhibited by everybody in discussing the change (or declining to, in most cases) also seems to indicate this was a decision that came from higher up in the organization rather than lower.

So, it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody at or near the very top of the organization was at the Nashville game. It also wouldn’t surprise me if their frustration grew along with the crowd’s, until they finally decided they had endured quite enough of a tune that was, as Ty Wubker himself said, “kinda depressing.”

Maybe there was some back-and-forth for a day or two debating the change, and the music lingered for the next game against St. Louis before the matter was settled. But in the end, if the people in charge say you have to change the music, you kinda have to change the music, don’t you? And since the music wasn’t written specifically for Stars players by a beloved heavy metal legend like “Puck Off,” the only real defense for the “Darkness” music is that it’s always been there, or tradition for its own sake. And that’s probably not a defense robust enough to withstand any powerful person’s frustration after a truly disappointing game.

Again, that’s just my theorizing. This season has been a very good one in many respects, but the last two playoff exits have stung quite a bit, and even this season has had its share of very pointed moments of frustration—that Nashville game certainly not least among them. And sometimes, frustrations boil over, and changes happen as a result.

Nobody is immune to exasperation when expectations aren’t met, as the Stars have shown in the past. Previous seasons with high levels of frustration have seen the Stars bring back Ken Hitchcock for a second run after a year of rolling out one of the worst penalty kills (2016-17) in NHL history (unlike this year). That 2017-18 Hitch 2.0 season even saw the team bring back a famous player’s tradition and all wear yellow laces during a winning streak, only for injuries and subpar play to land them out of the playoffs all the same, bringing on a third coaching change in three years.

And there’s no better example of how the organization has responded to frustration in the past than in Jim Montgomery’s first season, when discontent about the on-ice performance boiled over in December 2018 with an infamous tirade about Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin that came straight from the top.

Of course, it’s possible that I’m wrong to link a musical change in December 2024 to that pattern from years prior. But an abrupt departure from a 30-year-old tradition in the middle of the season is highly uncharacteristic for the team’s historically on-point game-presentation crew. This sort of change has the sense of a mandate about it, I think.

That’s not to say something better won’t be around the corner, though. New traditions have to start somewhere, and the NHL has even discarded one of the more sacred cows in hockey by allowing ads on the very sweaters the players wear. Jamie Benn is one of the last players not to wear a visor, and players get in trouble if their sweaters so much as bunch up on the back of their pants too frequently. What change isn’t on the table, at this point?

Full disclosure here: I’m just an elder millennial who still kinda misses the old organ music, so I’m probably the last person who should be giving advice about game presentation anyway. I’m not trying to say all change is bad or anything like that. But this is a pretty noteworthy departure from tradition, both historically and operationally.

Maybe the “Darkness” music was always bound to change at some point, though. And maybe the game presentation folks will come up with something just as memorable for the purposes of commiserating about an opponent’s goal for the next 30 years. But whatever the new tradition ends up being, it’s clear that those folks haven’t quite found it yet—perhaps because they only recently discovered they’d have to say good-bye to the old one.

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