Long after Sean Avery and Darcy Tucker made most of the news on Saturday night with their little tete a tete, the Dallas Stars were generating headlines of a different sort, completing a collapse for the ages in the last game on the schedule against the Los Angeles Kings. Ahead 4-0 in the third period, the Stars gave up five unanswered goals and ended up on the wrong side of a 6-5 defeat. The shoe had been poised to drop ever since; on Tuesday it did – and landed on general manager Doug Armstrong.
Instead of taking the expedient way out, the Stars dumped the architect of the team and not coach Dave Tippett who, along with his San Jose Sharks’ counterpart Ron Wilson, has been under heavy scrutiny these past few weeks. The Stars have been slipping gradually, ever since their 1999 Stanley Cup championship. Mike Modano, their leader, was starting to age; and none of the younger players coming on stream were capable of replacing him as a bona-fide No. 1 centre. Knowing their window of opportunity to challenge for a championship was closing, the Stars tried a couple of short-term fixes at the trading deadline last year that didn’t work at all.
From that moment on, after a tough first-round loss to the Vancouver Canucks, everyone in the organization was on a short leash. The Stars didn’t immediately name a replacement for Armstrong, but whoever inherits the team is going to find that the future isn’t exactly all that bright. No. 1 draft choices in 2007 and 2008 were traded away for Ladislav Nagy and Mattias Norstrom respectively. Nagy left as a free agent; Norstrom is 35 and currently on the injured list. The Stars remind you of the New York Islanders of the mid-to-late 1980s, a decent team whose best days are behind them.
In announcing the decision to replace Armstrong, the Stars noted that they wanted to go in a different direction. Up, I think is what they meant. Based on the age of their nucleus and the quality of players and prospects in the system, the prevailing thought around the NHL is that just the opposite may occur – things are going to get worse before they ever get a whole lot better.
