Dallas Appoint Ken Hitchcock as Head Coach

[Wing Across The Pond 196]

https://www.nhl.com/news/dallas-hires-ken-hitchcock-as-head-coach/c-288745470

[Dabura 12,207]

Hitchcock's Stars beat Ruff's Sabres in the '99 finals. Now Hitchcock replaces Ruff as head coach of the Stars. Illuminati confirmed.

[chaps80 1,591]

Back to the franchise he won a Cup with. Great way to end his career if this is gonna be his last coaching job before retirement. He should be able to get a hell of a lot more out of that team. They just need a solid no.1 goalie. Lehtonen COULD be if he worked harder. He always had a high skill level. Noemi is garbage, I don't care if he won a Cup and did pretty well in SJ. He's dropped off on a huge scale since going to Dallas.

[ChristopherReevesLegs 7,022]

1 hour ago, chaps80 said:

Back to the franchise he won a Cup with. Great way to end his career if this is gonna be his last coaching job before retirement. He should be able to get a hell of a lot more out of that team. They just need a solid no.1 goalie. Lehtonen COULD be if he worked harder. He always had a high skill level. Noemi is garbage, I don't care if he won a Cup and did pretty well in SJ. He's dropped off on a huge scale since going to Dallas.

They have terrible D as well. Klingberg and Hamhius are basically all they have. They'll need to sign some decent D FAs and have Lindell take a big step forward if they're going to be at all competitive again soon.

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29 minutes ago, ChristopherReevesLegs said:

They have terrible D as well. Klingberg and Hamhius are basically all they have. They'll need to sign some decent D FAs and have Lindell take a big step forward if they're going to be at all competitive again soon.

Honka's good.

But, yeah, goaltending and depth at both forward and defense are their problems. They have three great players in Benn, Seguin, and Klingberg...and not much else.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Dabura

[ChristopherReevesLegs 7,022]

10 minutes ago, Dabura said:

Honka's good.

But, yeah, goaltending and depth at both forward and defense are their problems. They have three great players in Benn, Seguin, and Klingberg...and not much else.

Just not sure Honka is ready to eat big minutes yet. Lindell seems closer if he can find some offensive game.

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13 hours ago, ChristopherReevesLegs said:

Just not sure Honka is ready to eat big minutes yet. Lindell seems closer if he can find some offensive game.

Ah, gotcha. In the here and now, it does seem to be "Klingberg, et al." I agree that no defenseman in their system seems poised to have a monster breakout 2017-18 season and establish himself as a top-pairing NHL defenseman practically overnight. Honka and Lindell do have good potential, though, and the Stars' core is young enough that they can probably afford to be patient. Or not. I dunno.

I have to say, it's a little disheartening that Benn, Seguin, and Klingberg would be the Wings' three best players (not named Henrik Zetterberg) and yet the Stars only finished a point ahead of us in the standings. I want to believe we can successfully "reload" over the next two or three years, but very many things will have to go very wonderfully right for us.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Dabura

[ChristopherReevesLegs 7,022]

12 minutes ago, Dabura said:

Ah, gotcha. In the here and now, it does seems to be "Klingberg, et al." I agree that no defenseman in their system seems poised to have a monster breakout 2017-18 season and establish himself as a top-pairing NHL defenseman practically overnight. Honka and Lindell do have good potential, though, and the Stars' core is young enough that they can probably afford to be patient. Or not. I dunno.

I have to say, it's a little disheartening that Benn, Seguin, and Klingberg would be the Wings' three best players (not named Henrik Zetterberg) and yet the Stars only finished a point ahead of us in the standings. I want to believe we can successfully "reload" over the next two or three years, but very many things will have to go very wonderfully right for us.

Well we do have Howard/Mrazek while they have Lehtonen/Niemi. And despite how much we complain about our D, I think it's deeper than theirs.

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12 hours ago, ChristopherReevesLegs said:

Well we do have Howard/Mrazek while they have Lehtonen/Niemi. And despite how much we complain about our D, I think it's deeper than theirs.

Niemi (.892 Sv% on the season) and Lehtonen (.902) certainly haven't been doing them any favors, no doubt about that. As for our D being deeper than theirs...I mean, sure. I guess. Maybe. If you're drunk enough, and/or desperate enough.

I guess my point was that winning Cups is really freaking hard.

[chaps80 1,591]

8 hours ago, F.Michael said:

Rumor has it that Hitchcock's 1st order of business is to resurrect the 'Mooterus'...

Hahaha I forgot about that abomination.