The regular season isn’t that far off, and the Dallas Stars are getting set to usher in a new era. That includes a new head coach in Jim Montgomery, who will endure quite an awkward situation in his first year as an NHL coach.
Every NHL team enters each regular season with a belief that they will succeed. That includes the Dallas Stars.
There’s always a varied set of expectations for each team, but the overall belief for each is that the season will be a good one. After all, no team goes into the season planning to be bad. It just doesn’t happen. Now, some teams may have some obvious holes that any hockey fan can pick out, but each one uses the offseason to put together what they think will be a competitive roster. Otherwise, the management and coaching wouldn’t be around for long.
But the end results always boast the biggest tells. As we know, only one team can have ultimate success each season. Every other team enjoys some variation of it but cannot claim to reach the ultimate level.
Here is where the Stars typically land. The last few years have seen Dallas go up and down the success ladder, finding bits and pieces of it but never reaching the maximum level. The last time they did that was almost 20 years ago.
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It’s been a while since Dallas hit the peak, which is disappointing in and of itself. But the inconsistency and variation of their success levels over the past few years may be the more discouraging part.
In the past five seasons, the Stars have made the playoffs only twice. The last time they did involved them winning the Central division and Western Conference regular season titles and falling one game short of the Western Conference Finals. That was in 2015-16.
The last two years have brought a solid mixture of unpreparedness, uncertainty, and disappointment. Dallas turned in one of the worst records in the NHL in 2016-17 and never really got off of the ground floor to meet their astronomical expectations. And in 2017-18, the Stars found a way to show off plenty of potential, soar to new heights in a lot of areas, and play four solid months of hockey. And yet, they still missed the postseason by two points.
The promise comes and goes in shifts, but the overall success never reaches a good enough level.
And so, the Dallas Stars began their adventure in trying to fix that this past summer by hiring Jim Montgomery as their newest head coach.
Montgomery is the Stars’ third head coach since 2016-17 but is different from the past two coaches in the fact that he has no NHL coaching experience of any kind. In his few years of coaching college hockey at the University of Denver, it’s clear that success follows him and he knows how to win. But can that translate to the NHL? By the looks of it, they’re going to need it to and fast.
With the new hiring, Montgomery is officially being put in an odd position. He’s only the fifth head coach in history to jump directly from college hockey to the NHL without any experience in between. In other words, it doesn’t happen often. And when it does, teams are typically trying to get back on track after falling apart altogether. An example of this would be the New York Rangers, who hired Dan Quinn this past summer after putting together a tumultuous 2017-18 campaign.
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But the Dallas Stars aren’t off the tracks right now. They had 92 points last season and would have made the Stanley Cup Playoffs had it not been for a horrific two-week span in the month of March.
In addition to that, they have a roster loaded with talent. Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Alexander Radulov, and John Klingberg are just a few of the superstar players currently in their lineup. But all talent has a shelf life, and the Dallas Stars are wasting that with their current lack of ultimate success. Their top talent is still in or just now entering their primes, so the clock is ticking. That’s what has been so frustrating.
So now, the expectations for Montgomery are rather high, especially for a first year coach. The Stars have made it clear that they want Montgomery to be their coach of the future. He’s young, owns a good scheme, and knows how to maximize the potential of his roster. But at the same time, they aren’t expecting for it to take two or three years for him to get Dallas off the ground.
The expectations are for him to create a spark early on and get things in motion quickly. With the roster in its current state , there’s no time for delay. The lack of success has to turn around and it needs to be a speedy transition.
Montgomery is the new head coach of the Dallas Stars. In most cases, he would be welcomed in and given the time and space to build success. And while he still has that to an extent, he’s in an odd position. He’s the Stars’ “coach of the future,” but must find a way to quickly get the ball rolling.
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Tyler Seguin is in need of a new contract and will be looking for a successful year that features promise for the future. The Dallas fan base has spent too many years suffering through mediocrity and is expecting big things from the coming season. And finally, the management needs to see their investment on a bench boss pay off in full force for once.
The Dallas Stars need Montgomery to be their coach of the future, but also need him to meet the high expectations in his first season behind the bench. He’s kind of being thrown into the fire on this one with little room for continuous error. Things have to change starting this season, and it’s up to Montgomery to make that happen.
He’s got the resume and the resources to make it happen. All that matters is execution.
All eyes are on Jim Montgomery for the 2018-19 season. Can he exceed the lofty expectations set for him in his first year at the professional level? Only time will tell.