On expectations, NHL coaches, and how it reminds me of a game called Root

On the coaching opening in Dallas, what Pete DeBoer did wrong, and more on a board game I recently discovered.

This is one of those stories that comes with an early disclaimer — I’m not really sure where this piece is going to end up, but I think I might have something interesting here.

Either way, we’ll see.

It’s been roughly 72 hours since the Dallas Stars fired head coach Pete DeBoer, a move that felt both expected and stunning at the same time. Sure rumors had swirled for a little bit, but this was a coach that had reached three straight Western Conference Finals and had one of the NHL’s best résumés the past three seasons.

DeBoer did what many coaches in the NHL could only dream of and the Stars, in part, are one of the NHL’s power brokers right now because of what he did.

But that level of success brings higher level of expectations and when a team is in a window like the Stars are, as DeBoer learned it really was “Stanley Cup of bust,” simply existing amongst the elite isn’t enough, you have to find ways to beat them at the biggest time.

We like to pretend sports are equal, that everyone has an equal chance of winning, but that’s only a lie we tell ourselves to justify the hope that a game really represents the full-blank slate of possibility.

Now I did a lot of thinking this weekend, always a dangerous thing, and couldn’t help but compare the NHL to a game I was recently introduced to, Root, which I now play regularly with my group of friends.

Root is a war/strategy game with different anthropomorphic factions battling to control the forest. The first faction to 30 victory points win the game.

Simple, right?

Well each faction has different abilities, advantages, and challenges.

Marquis De Cat, for example, starts with warriors all over the map. It’s a position of power, so success and gaining the 30 victory points isn’t just about presence but rather dominance and building across the forest.

At the same time another faction, the Woodland Alliance, starts with little territory and works to spread sympathy across the board, trying to create revolts within the game.

It’s multiple players playing the same game, with technically the same goal, get 30 victory points, but with very different ways and expectations of getting there.

The game itself also takes on a life of it’s own, where the group has to decide how to police itself and do everything in their power to find ways to make everyone else’s life difficult.

The game designer, Cole Wehrle, put it best when he explained that Root is, in fact, a mean game.

It’s not simple, no two players have the same chance or path, and it’s what also makes it more fascinating at the same time.

And that’s what the NHL is in many ways.

We like to pretend, “it’s all about the Stanley Cup,” but of the 32 teams in the NHL this season, how many actually lived and died by that decree?

Probably a third, right?

Below that there’s a “playoff contender” class of teams. Teams that will market they are pushing for the Stanley Cup, sure, but the reality is either by design or circumstance that team is dreaming of the second round. That’s success, being amongst the final eight, anything else at this point is gravy.

Then of course there’s two lower classes, the teams entering and exiting a rebuild. It’s a similar lot for both sides of that coin, gain future assets to lay low for the eventual revolt, but one comes with much more pressure than the other.

It’s this reality, or game, that makes coaching and managing in the NHL both tricky and fascinating. You have to coach to the expectations of the class, or faction, you’ve selected.

For DeBoer, he’d reached the point with the Stars where charisma mattered. That’s really the biggest difference, if you think about it, between him and other coaches with similar regular season résumés who then surpassed him in the playoffs.

Jon Cooper and Paul Maurice, for example, push their teams. But they also win the press conferences and win the perception game. Everyone loves a good Paul Maurice story, Jon Cooper, even with his detractors, has partially politicked his way to being Canada’s top choice to coach the national team.

DeBoer always looks sour and dour on the bench, he’s critical and he’s the smartest person in the room. These are all things that can work for a coach, if they also have the splash of charisma that somehow connects where you need allies either inside or outside the organization.

Ken Hitchcock, for example, was difficult to play for. He was a taskmaster, but he treated everyone fairly and he also understood the charisma portion — the jovial teacher that would have most hockey writer eating out of his hands because he taught them more about the sport and filled their notebooks.

It’s funny, because the other team I cover frequently, the Detroit Red Wings, now has their version of DeBoer after replacing Derek Lalonde with Todd McLellan back in December.

Lalonde was the right coach at the wrong time for Detroit, the teacher needed for a team exiting a rebuild, but not the fiery taskmaster that could drive them further into the playoff contender space.

McClellan didn’t change the Red Wings completely, but he altered their attitude, and that attitude adjustment will be vital to his first full season running the bench in Detroit this fall.

McClellan will eventually wear players down, it’s why Trent Yawney has been his right-hand man for so long, the lieutenant that blunts the blows, but before that happens he’ll likely get Detroit into the postseason.

The long-term question for McClellan, and the Red Wings at large, is whether he’s a sherpa to the playoffs or legit Stanley Cup contention. But it’s also a question, for Detroit, you don’t have to worry about until you’ve actually booked a ticket to Game No. 83 for the first time since Dylan Larkin was a 19-year-old rookie.

Like in Root, you don’t get to worry about an end game if you can’t even build a foundation to the middle.

Connecting this back to Dallas, and now the only open head coaching job in the NHL, the next Stars coach is going to have a mountainous task to top what DeBoer did.

DeBoer not only won lots of games, he also made Stars ownership a good amount of money with three consecutive deep playoff runs — that’s why paying him $4.25 million to not coach this season doesn’t really bother anyone, but he never delivered that final moment where the Stars were just four games away from having their names etched on the Stanley Cup.

We’ve heard the reports of Dallas not wanting a re-tread, which tracks with how Jim Nill hires coaches.

Nill loved Jim Montgomery as a coach, in fact, if not for his off-ice incident, Montgomery would likely still be coaching in Dallas today. Nill was almost laying the groundwork for his next Montgomery last week, noting how with a veteran staff someone with less NHL track record as a head coach could grow into the role.

But unlike the Montgomery hire, where Dallas was still in the “playoff contender” sphere, the new coach will have to reach the Stanley Cup Final to even top what his predecessor did.

That’s not going to scare anyone off from the job, in fact it might even draw in some other surprising candidates, but it’s going to make sticking the landing very difficult.

If we think about the Stars as a Root faction, the only victory points that matter come in the form of silverware. It’s a long game with a tough end game, and one where there’s nowhere to hide and build below the surface.