Thursday, March 27, 2008

Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Beware the Ides of March

By Todd Maternowski

Konnichiwa, hockey fans! Last week we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Cupcheck, with a great party that provided everyone with a lot of good, clean, family-friendly fun (so much fun, in fact, that Peter Forsberg still comes over to my apartment every day to help me fill in my Rainbow Brite coloring books. And they say hockey players are boring stiffs!) (Peter's got a wicked slick collection of two-piece Smurfette pajamas, too. Really cool guy). I was planning on dedicating this week to my annual Don't Get Too Comfortable Column, in which I single out those head coaches in the NHL who, due to sucking --or worse-- shouldn't be doing any long-term planning in their current jobs (John Tortorella, you might want to wait a bit on putting in those Lightning-themed hardwood floors in the game room). As part of my ever-thorough research, I was perusing my list of Future Ex-Coaches and came across none other than our very own Dave Tippett, who is either one embarrassing regular season loss or one embarrassing first-round exit away from joining the august ranks and rank Augusts of fired coaches.

It's not just that Tippett's teams have made him known as the Marty Schottenheimer of Hockey: tremendous regular season success, followed by scaredy-cat early collapses in the playoffs. The guy is obviously a good coach, just not a great coach. And that won't cut it in Dallas, where good coaches get run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, and are then traditionally replaced by coaches who aspire one day to be mediocre.

If the losing continues, Dallas fans will be making a mad rush on these babies

But this year, the Stars have been a completely schizoid team, incapable of showing its long-suffering fans any sort of long-term consistency: massive winning streaks are followed by gut-stomping losing streaks, which in turn are followed by league-crushing winning streaks. Clearly this is a team that has enough talent and drive to win the Stanley Cup, but the on-ice results are spotty at best. Massive swings in the win-loss column generally point out a team that has massive chemistry and leadership issues in the locker room, and the single most important job of a coach is to bring perspective to the always-volatile world of the players.

Of course, it's not just Tippett's "fault": players like Brenden Morrow, Mike Modano and Marty Turco are just as responsible. But they also have contracts the team won't be ripping up anytime soon, whereas Tippett can be unceremoniously dumped later tonight if the Sharks win 7-0. But getting the Stars back to being even a .500 team is going to take massive coaching cajones, and the next week and a half will prove what, if anything, Tipp is sporting between his legs.

On a positive note, it seems like the Stars, 1-6 in their last seven and 2-6 since trading for Brad Richards, are getting all their losing out of the way in March rather than in April. This season the Stars have had two winning streaks which, had they been during the Stanley Cup playoffs, would have catapulted them, at a minimum, to the Western Conference Finals. Are the Stars conserving their energy, sliding into a low-pressure lower seed and gearing up for a playoff run with all these pathetic losses? It's impossible to say --but yes, yes they are doing exactly that.

According to terrific research (terrific because I don't have to spend time doing it myself) done by Dallas' own Pope of Hockey, Daryl Reaugh, it seems the Stars traditionally rock much ass in March, only to fizzle in April. This season, they sizzled in February before mailing it in for the entire month of March. Can the Stars' monthly cycles be aligned for a longer-than-minimum Cup run?

Two reasons I think they can: Sergei Zubov and Brad Richards. Zubov is Mr. Aggravatingly Calm on the ice, and his absence is undoubtedly the #1 reason why the Stars' play has been wilder than a meth-addicted yeti in flames. If and when Zubov returns, the Stars will not only have their top player back in uniform, but will have that stabilizing veteran presence to help out our struggling core of young defensemen (in other words, all of our d-men other than Robidas. I haven't seen Norstrom play defense this season, so I'm just assuming he's another cherry-picking forward that doesn't want to get dirty in the defensive zone). Prying prime minutes away from Norstrom and Niskanen will be a crucial upgrade for the Stars in any case, and our power play --which generally looks as pretty and smooth as the Cryptkeepers' dust-caked genitals-- will perhaps not be a total embarrassment on the ice.

Reason number two is Brad Richards: for a 2-6 team, Richards has surprised many by scoring at an impressive clip of more than a point a game. Of course, almost all of those points came in the two wins, while he's been shut out far more times than not. Still, for a top-flight player coming to a conference in a different time zone, there is always going to be a period of adjustment. When Richards had five assists in his first game, I warned my wife (no one else is legally allowed to come within 90 yards of me on game nights after last year's Game 7 meltdown and the resulting chain of events)(although I maintain to this day that that cop started the whole mess by attacking my knuckles with a slow-developing, nigh-imperceptible headbutt) that it was bad news, that Stars fans would come to expect that level of record-setting performance every night from now on, and that the bar was set too high right off the bat.

Alas, they give no I Told You So awards, at least not outside of Boston. But for anyone going through that much personal and professional upheaval, there is going to be a period of adjustment, where the new guy has to find his role, and the old guys need to re-define theirs. Nothing happens automatically, overnight, without a specific process that allows the team time to meld. Some fans are already calling the Richards' trade the worst in Stars history, after just 8 regular season games. I'm sure these are the same people who dump their babies in dingo packs because little Prescott didn't learn to read and write in his first two weeks.

Ahhhh..... those were the days

Not to mention, a single point-per-game player in last year's playoffs probably would have meant an easy five-game series victory for the Stars. We have this guy locked up for three years, and he was obviously signed to be the long-term replacement for Mike Modano in the coming years, so why get all bent out of shape over eight games? I have a gut feeling --call it women's intuition-- that the last 3-4 games will see some improved play on the part of the Stars, they solidify their #6 seed, then kick the Northwest Division leader's rear in five. In fact, with Ribeiro and Richards down the middle, our impressive young crop of defensemen and Marty in net, in the next half-decade Stars fans might see more Cups than Barry Bonds. More on that later.

If not? Then Tippett will be ritualistically sacrificed on the blood-stained altar Mark Cuban uses in the AAC's basement, and the Stars will have to start their rebuilding program next year from scratch. Too bad, too: while I love the playoffs, having a team that wins from October through March is --heretically-- probably more important for a fan's psyche. Just ask a Blackhawks or Maple Leafs fan if they would like to have a team that actually might win on any given night.

Well, that's it for this week's Cupcheck. Tune in next week for my annual April Fool's Column, in which I will detail the Stars' Stanley Cup parade route and ask Brent Hull about his unexpected return to the Modano line two games before the playoffs!

Related stories

• Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Stars play Rope-a-Duck (April 3, 2008)
• Week in View: No Fooling Edition (March 27, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Hockey > NHL > Stars

Comments

James Scott Verified

I never thought I'd hear a voice of reason coming from this column...thanks for talking me down off the ledge.

6 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Todd Maternowski Staff

Thanks, James: I try to keep reason and logic to a bare minimum, but seeing as the Stars have two games in hand on everyone else (I know, right?), and control their own destiny... it's not time to contemplate the ledge just yet.

6 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )