Welcome?

As I sat here wondering just how to launch the new blog, I couldn’t help but come back to the word “Welcome”.

This is in fact my first post into my new blog that I’ve brought over from the unsatisfying NHL Connect blogs at NHL.com – this new blog is accompanies by many changes and additions to the Dallas Stars organizations, which made Welcome proper.  Additions that obvious replace others within the organizations. You can’t have two head coaches after all. Before I start with the Stars/NHL talk however, I’d like to just say a few things about the blog itself. It is literally brand new and as such is a work in progress. Over the next week or two you will see many changes to it. Additions in content as well as aesthetic shifts. Either way – you’re here reading “The Shooting Star That Destroyed Us All” – feel free to call it St. Dus for short… or something. Hmm, they fired Tippett didn’t they? Quite right. Harsh – yes. Necessary? Probably. Fact of the matter is – the Stars haven’t won a cup since 99 at which point Ken Hitchcock was the coach.

The obvious fact here is that Tippett failed to win one for Dallas. In any league whether it be the NHL, NBA, NFL, etc. When your players are getting paid millions to play the game and the coaches are getting paid equally ludicrous amounts of money to guide those players to victory, there is a short window for you to do well or get fired. It’s the way it is. I think the hockey fans see themselves as a fan of a more ethical sport than those who are watching their sport get molested by the use of steroids and even bigger pay checks. And to some extent you are right. Hockey is one of the only “mainstream” sports that has kept a good amount of it’s integrity as it tries to force it’s way into the hearts of the American sports fan. But at the same time, it’s naive to think that a team is going to keep a coach after 6 seasons behind the bench despite the lack of the “big prize” to show for their time and effort. Nor should they. Teams have franchise players who can stay with the team for their entire career based on nothing more than their face (see Mike Modano). Coaches don’t have that luxury, many times they are held responsible for the team’s conduct as a whole regardless of whether that weight is deserved. Whether it’s deserved or not they are the leader of that team and under their leadership they didn’t get to the ultimate goal. In fact, under Tippett’s command they rarely made it past the first round. Considering the talent on the team despite teh salary cap era the team should be in the WCF’s every other year if not the SCF. But enough of Tippett’s firing, what about that hiring?

Well, they couldn’t go without a head coach, that’s for sure.  But who’s to say hiring Marc Crawford is going to be better than the absence? Wait, wait, wait. Am I one of those avid haters of the Crawford legacy (or lack there of)? Not at all. In fact I have managed to develop (force) high hopes for the new head coach. He won a cup in 96 with the Avalanche. Decided to mimic Dave Tippet’s patented “Lose in the first round everytime we make the playoffs” strategy with the Canucks then moved onto Los Angeles to tutor a young decaying (oxymoron) Kings team that saw two terrible seasons under Marky C. The question coming into the hiring wasn’t, “WHYY!?” – it was “Why?” — At least that was my question as an objective fan. Fact of the matter is – hundreds of millions of dollars are riding heavily on managers of the franchise making good decisions. Everyone knows a good decision takes planning and reason. We can all rest assured that there is atleast one good reason for the move. This of course brings us to the new GM – former Stars forward Joe Neiuwendyk. He won the only Dallas cup with the Stars in 99 before being traded a bit later.

Now he’s back as the General Manager – shaking things up as one might expect a young first timer GM to do under the rule of Tom Hicks who is notorious for his “Whatever…” attitude to the teams he owns. Why hire a GM if you have to generally manage for yourself, right? What were the new GM’s motives? Nobody can really know for sure – as with most press coverage the interviews are all filled with side stepping generalized answers that you will hear one hundred times until the Coach either fails or succeeds – then you will get the real reason – or the excuse I guess, depending on which side of the spectrum the outcome lays at the end of the next two or so seasons. All we can do is guess – and I love my opinions more than I love sleeping pills, so sit back and relax. First – go to the Dallas Stars website and watch the rehash videos of the 99 Stanley Cup playoffs they posted during the playoffs (that we missed out on) as a celebration for the 10 year anniversary (and ugly reminder) of the only cup we’ve ever won. Watch the style of play – see the skills and assets used. Despite a substantially larger focus on defense that was prominent back then compared to the lack of such in today’s game, the team played with speed and puck possession. Sound like any other teams we know of now (e.g. Penguins, Red Wings, Hawks)? I think Joe wants to repeat that success and hopefully if he’s smart – tweak that successful set up to fit today’s altered game even more. That starts with two things. Skilled players who want to win and a coach who knows how to make the players play to their potential every night. Ken Hitchcock could do that and there’s no denying the skill that players like Hull, Lehtinen, Modano, Zubov and Neiuwendyk brought to the table in their primes. The question was – what does a coach need to get the players that the Stars have on staff to play like everyone knows they can/could? Well Tippett is a great coach – but many consider him soft. Essentially he was nice enough to take all of the blame and not hold players accountable until they hit the fifth game of a losing streak or something equally depressing. Well, if they need a drill instructor who is going to tell them they are being an lazy tool who is over-payed then I can only imagine that Crawford is well equipped to handle such a task. As such I think that edge that Ken Hitchcock had might be found in Crawford if he can shut his mouth long enough not to get into fights with other team’s coaches. Either way, I don’t think the Stars organization is going to let him run their reputation for “class” into the ground after the Avery fiasco. That fact combined with the idea that perhaps a couple years as a broadcaster has humbled Marc Crawford and made him a better coach for it could pan out well. I hope it does for the sake of an expansion team in a terrible economy that is owned by a owner who is slowly falling deeper into debt. And of course for the sake of my free time – of which I have an abundance. At the end of the day, what do I think about the changes? I think Neiuwendyk is going to be as good a GM as anyone else we could have hired despite resume differences. I think it was the right move to split up the Co-GM tandum of Hull/Jackson and get them into more comfortable roles in the organization regardless of who they chose to replace them. I have my many doubts about Crawford but, I think firing Tippett was the right thing to do. And at the end of the day, it’s an interesting situation we Stars fans find ourselves in these days and will only get more interesting with the Draft coming up on Friday (Picking 8th) allowing for us to finally try to put together just what Joe’s trying to build here in Dallas through the use of draft picks and trades. Yeah, this off-season is going to be bumpy.

But, you’re lying to yourself if you say you aren’t entertained. Stay tuned for my Draft blog/s as well as discussing the financial situation of the Dallas Stars in the coming week!