Dallas Stars: New Coach Must Strike Balance Between Offense, Defense

The Dallas Stars are on the hunt for their next head coach after Ken Hitchcock announced his retirement. While it’s exciting to see who Jim Nill will choose, the decision carries serious weight.

The NHL coaching market is tricky. It’s full of coaches who have developed their specific methods and systems, which can be great or horrible depending on a team’s makeup.

For the Dallas Stars, it’s a huge decision that has the potential to make or break their upcoming season. That’s largely because of a difficult adjustment they’ll have to make on a team that struggled to find its identity last season.

Defense First

Last season, under Hitchcock, the Stars were a defensive-minded club. That’s how Hitch teams are built. They’ve always functioned like that because his teams were a very direct representation of his philosophy.

However, that didn’t end up working too well for the Stars. With him no longer being the man behind the bench next season, Dallas has to find a way to keep some of Hitchcock’s influence in the room.

More from Analysis

• Dallas Stars Traverse City Tournament: Who had great performances?
• Taking a look at the teams the Dallas Stars will be playing in the preseason
• Should the Dallas Stars revisit signing Patrick Kane this season?
• Realistic regular season stats for Dallas Stars Roope Hintz
• Realistic regular season stats for Dallas Stars Joe Pavelski

Tyler Seguin played his best year in the NHL in 2017-18 even though the Stars were at a low point. He was playing in every situation and killing penalties for the first time in his NHL career. While that is sure to drive up his price when Dallas goes to re-sign him this summer, it’s also made him a more well-rounded player.

What can be left behind is the underuse of players like Jason Spezza and Julius Honka because of their more offensive-minded play or smaller stature.

Still, Hitchcock’s influence wasn’t all bad, and being defensively responsible is necessary in this league. The new coach will have to find a way to highlight the best parts of Dallas’ defensive game, while reducing the influence of the negatives.

Offensive Strength

What was lost in Hitchcock-lead hockey? Scoring. What can you not win games without? Scoring. That was a major issue for the Stars last season, and it proved to be a huge contributing factor to their late season meltdown.

The new coach will need to refuel Dallas’ offensive strengths that were flourishing under Lindy Ruff in the years prior to Hitch. They’ll have to remind the players of how to not only be defensively well-positioned, but also be moving the puck intelligently to produce offense.

That’s no easy task. This team has fallen off the radar offensively of late, and the climb back to the top of the league will not be smooth sailing.

The Stars’ next coach will need to get players who struggled under Hitchcock but thrived under Ruff back to their best games, which is much easier said than done.

Next: Seguin is a Leader, and He's Being Recognized

Moving Forward

Whomever stands behind the bench next for Dallas has an uphill battle ahead. It won’t be easy to get this team moving in the right direction as quickly as they need to get started, but it will be what makes the Stars a contender down the line.