The NHL is ever-changing, and so are the styles with which the teams play. The Dallas Stars waiving forward Adam Cracknell shows this.
On Monday, October 9th, the Dallas Stars lost veteran forward Adam Cracknell to the New York Rangers via a waiver wire move put into motion on Sunday. Cracknell had posted career highs of 11 goals and 16 points last season with Dallas, but got the boot from Jim Nill and Ken Hitchcock over the weekend.
Cracknell has been through quite a bit as an NHLer, as the Rangers will be the 32-year-old’s sixth National Hockey League team and 13th pro franchise in his career. This article is about Cracknell and the waiver claim, but this one, is not.
This article is about the copycat nature of the NHL, a league in which teams see success above them and immediately want to emulate the same style. Long gone are the days of bumping and grinding, wearing out your opponents from the inside out, and keeping the puck for as long as possible.
With the Pittsburgh Penguins having won the past two Stanley Cups with a blistering, speedy, four-line attack, it has caused the remainder of the league to implement a similar, if not identical style of hockey. The Dallas Stars are sheep in the metaphorical farm, following suit before they’re left behind.
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Not to say the Stars haven’t tried to run the wheels off of the opposition in recent years – under Lindy Ruff, the Dallas Stars ran at Mach 2 basically all the time – but under Hitchcock, it comes as somewhat of a surprise. See, Hitchcock is an old-school hockey coach, infamous for his aged, physical approached to winning hockey games: just beat your opponent down to the ground with size and grit.
Hitchcock was mightily successful in his first stint with Dallas from 1997 to 2002 thanks to his style of size and determination cleaning things up for the rapid skaters. We often saw the likes of Derian Hatcher or Pat Verbeek rip up opposing teams along the boards and glass, allowing the Mike Modano and Brett Hull types to do what they do best: generate offense.
When it’s done right, this system can still work, and frankly, might forever work; good coaching and effective systems don’t go out of style. Ken Hitchcock, at 66 years old and having never played before, is the perfect example of this theory.
Size and grit is what Adam Cracknell can provide, right? So why wouldn’t Hitchcock, formerly the coach of the nasty, ginormous St. Louis Blues, want the 6’3″ righty with great skill and strength around the boards? The Stars have to speed up their game and not get left behind. Remi Elie, recalled by the Dallas Stars after a good weekend with the AHL’s Texas Stars, was the choice here in order to get more skating excellence into the lineup.
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The Dallas Stars are going to roll four lines and skate their legs off because they have to, not necessarily because they want to. Cracknell, unfortunately, was dead weight as a skater, although he was one of Dallas’s strongest possession forwards in his 69 games last season (51.3 Corsi For %). There’s no telling if Elie will be as effective as Cracknell was in the offensive zone, but Elie is a majestic skater that gets up to speed marvelously, so this is his job.
That’s the tough pill to swallow, however. The league as a whole has divulged so deep into its copycat nature of “it works for them, it will work for us,” that a slow and effective forward isn’t as valuable as a fast and ineffective player. The Stars are not the first team to implement this strategy, but they won’t be the last.
Remi Elie is a great young player with stellar penalty kill abilities, but his possession metrics have yet to come into their own at just 47.5 CF%. It’s worrisome for a team coached by a man that has made basically every penny he has by throwing big and heavy teams out there to toss potentially ineffective forwards onto the ice.
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Again, it’s just the copycat nature of the game, and nothing will change until someone dethrones the clubs at the top. Hopefully the Dallas Stars will still have the same swagger and fun they always have as the NHL continues to force their hand.