Past history with the team shouldn’t matter in the Dallas Stars coaching search

At some point in the not-too-distant future we’ll break down the Dallas Stars specific position groups from this season and where they might go in the offseason.

In fact, that’s what I was supposed to start writing today here at DLLS and had told our content Czar, Bobby Karalla, that’s what I’d write today.

I’m also bad at sticking to certain plans, if you’ve ever heard my rambling answers on the DLLS Stars podcast, you have a slight idea of how my brain works and how even I have no idea where it’ll go.

Long story short, I started writing about the Stars forwards, scrapped it (for now) and wrote this piece instead.

This Stars head coaching vacancy is a gold mine for those in the #content space. It’s easy to build out listicles of candidates that offer little real substance, pieces that allow you to look like the smartest person in the room if you get it right.

It’s fun, I get it. It’s also made it really easy for our DLLS Stars daily show to fill segments about the pros and cons of various coaches.

I also think we need to stop and acknowledge something — past history with the Stars, playing or otherwise, shouldn’t and will not matter in who Jim Nill decides to hire.

The one time the Stars made a “legacy hire” for their head coaching position under Jim Nill, it came in Ken Hitchcock’s one-season return that went horribly. It wasn’t Nill’s hire, it was made by the owner, and since then Nill has pushed back, behind-the-scenes, rather well to control the hiring process.

Jim Montgomery, who Nill believes was a good hockey hire, had no ties to Dallas. Neither did DeBoer.

It’s why a lot of the lists and articles that go out of their way to mention a past Dallas tie as the main reason for a hire, or how a coach acted as a player here, lose me. Steve Ott, for example, might be an ideal candidate for the job, but I don’t care and Jim Nill doesn’t care that he once played for the Stars.

Same goes for some other players with older ties to the organization. Sergei Zubov, for example, could be a coaching candidate after his time in the KHL, but what he did for the organization as a franchise-defining defender shouldn’t have anything to do with his coaching tenure.

Too often NHL teams fall into these traps, assuming that past playing history with a team is somehow a connection that leads to success at a coaching or management level. I’ve seen it first hand some places, particularly in Detroit, where a lack of an ability to separate Steve Yzerman’s playing career from his management style have led to a really slow rebuild.

Nill had no ties to Dallas, he was simply the best candidate, which was a much needed push in the right direction for a franchise that once gave Brett Hull the GM job because he happened to score a pretty big goal in 1999.

The Stars next head coach could be a former Star, technically Jim Montgomery’s eight games with Dallas during the 2001-02 season made he him a former Stars. But that’s supposed to be a footnote on the résumé, not a reason for the hire.