In the playoffs last spring, Ken Hitchcock and his former team, the St. Louis Blues, eliminated the Dallas Stars in seven games. Hitchcock is nothing if not a gracious winner, and he praised the Stars on the way out.
“They are the future of the NHL,” he said that night after a Game 7 win. “They are where the NHL is going. That’s what they are.”
In that series, the Stars gave the more experienced Blues all they could handle, and they did it without Tyler Seguin. They also had a style that was very uncharacteristic of teams like the Blues and Los Angeles Kings that had experienced success in the West. It was wide open. It was fun. The Stars were happy to win 5-4 or 6-5, as long as they won.
That comment stuck with a lot of people. Does Hitchcock, who was recently hired by Dallas as head coach even remember making it?
“I sure do,” he said when we chatted on Monday. “I thought the way the game was going was the way they were playing. I thought the game was going to lots of speed, lots of pressure on the forecheck, lots of pinching by defensemen. The one thing I didn’t anticipate was the passive play in the neutral zone going on now.”
It’s funny how much can change in a year. The future of the NHL doesn’t appear to be quite so far south. Watch these playoffs, and it’s clear the future of the NHL is currently residing in two cities: Toronto and Edmonton.
Dallas?
It’s less team of the future and more of a fixer-upper.
The Stars never recovered from injuries or the loss of so many experienced defensemen last season. Their goaltending duo of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi wasn’t good enough to bail the Stars out of the defensive liabilities. In today’s NHL, good teams need two good goalies. Dallas maybe has one.
A slew of veterans have moved on, or are likely to move on. Young players were forced into action in positions and responsibilities they probably were’t ready for last season. Hitchcock sees himself as the beneficiary of some of that. At least the part about young player gaining experience.
“They’re still young players, but they have games under their belt now,” said Hitchcock of guys like Devin Shore, Brett Ritchie and Radek Faksa. “I have five, six, seven forwards who all played prominent roles all year when not everybody was supposed to play those roles this year. They lost all those veteran guys and the world changed.”
It wasn’t great for the Stars in 2016-17, but Hitchcock is hopeful of a payoff next season. But even more important than the play of his young forwards will be the play of one of his best veterans.
On Tuesday, Hitchcock planned to sit down with Tyler Seguin for the first time. In Seguin, Hitchcock sees a player who is a No. 1 center. He has all the skill and ability to become one of the best in the league. But Hitchcock's success in Dallas may hinge on how willing a participant he has in Seguin to play the way the coach wants him to play.
Hitchcock has to earn his trust and convince him that the additional responsibility he’s going to give him -- taking on guys like Connor McDavid, Jonathan Toews and Mark Scheifele -- is not a burden, but a necessary challenge that will catapult the Stars.
“When you’re a No. 1 center, you have the skill and ability to be a No. 1 center, it’s not just skill and talent. Now it’s details,” Hitchcock said. “My job is to get Tyler to another level as far as the details necessary to be a No. 1 guy.”
He’s already gone through this once in Dallas with Mike Modano, and in Modano, Hitchcock found a player at the point in his career where he was a receptive listener. In Modano’s first full season with Hitchcock, he went from minus-12 the previous season to a plus-43. Modano was 26 years old that season. Seguin turns 26 in January.
So this will be the first meeting between Hitchcock and Seguin, but far from the last.
“We talked about it hours and daily to the point where you’re on the ice, there’s no hesitation, no thought process, no thinking,” Modano said of his relationship with Hitchcock. “You know it’s going to happen.”
The hope for Hitchcock is that it gets to that point for him and Seguin.
“I got a receptive player the first time I talked to Mike about this,” Hitchcock said. “He wanted to know what responsibilities a No. 1 guy had to embrace. I don’t want to say it was instant, but it sure was quick. He was already halfway there.”
The Stars played an exciting brand of hockey. They also found lots of exciting and unique ways to lose games. You couldn’t shut off a Stars game when they were up three goals, because you just knew other teams would find their way back in. In that regard, it almost made the Stars a must-watch team.
Had they won more consistently, perhaps it would have become the future of hockey. Instead, Hitchcock wants this group to evolve into a more mature style. In the Central Division, often the team that blinks first is the team that ends up losing. You can’t make too many mistakes against the Blackhawks, Predators and Wild and expect to win consistently.
So that’s what Hitchcock is looking for from his group: A little more maturity.
“A mature game means you’re not the first team making the mistakes,” Hitchcock said. “Your continued solid play forces the other team into mistakes. I’ve always found winning in the Central Division -- because it’s so competitive, so many good players and teams -- if you don’t crack first, you give yourself a chance to win.”