Shap and Tiffin: Let's look at the Stars coaching search and discuss potential candidates

Robert Tiffin joins me to chat about who could be coaching the Stars next and what might come into play.

Photo by Christina Shapiro.

Jim Nill is currently looking for the next head coach of the Dallas Stars. He’s said he’ll look at a wide variety of candidates, but that sounds more daunting than his task probably is. In reality, there’s a finite pool of people qualified to coach an NHL team, and Nill probably had an idea of his top candidates well before he called Pete DeBoer into his office last Friday morning. 

When it comes to coaching hires in the NHL, there are a lot of routes a team can go, but there are also some broad similarities in terms of the “type” of coach a team brings in. Generally, teams hire coaches with specific goals in mind, whether in terms of culture, playstyle, communication, or all of the above.

For today, Robert Tiffin and I are going to look at a few of the coaching candidates Dallas is likely to consider, grouping them all into those sorts of categories. Even within those categories, of course, each coach is different, but there are certainly some broad patterns that you can recognize when it comes to how NHL teams are usually run. So let’s look at those patterns and see if we can’t decipher some of the key things Nill might be looking for. 

Category 1: Veteran NHL Coaches, i.e. “Retreads”

Robert: Now, word has leaked out through a couple of sources that Nill and the Stars are not looking to hire “retread” coaches. Then again, Nill also implied at his press conference last week that he would be open to hiring a coach out of Europe, so long as that coach had some kind of NHL experience. 

The Stars are also looking to win right now, not three or four years down the road. So as much as Nill might want to hire the next generation’s Scotty Bowman, would he consider someone like, say, Gerard Gallant, if only to allow another young coach to learn from them in the meantime? Would Glen Gulutzan fall into this category, given that he’s been the head coach of two different NHL teams already? 

Sean: One of the biggest, I guess, issues I’ve had with that line of thinking/reporting so far is how “retread” has never really been properly defined. Technically speaking, I would think Glen Gulutzan is technically a retread, he’s had this job before, but he’s also not a “retread” in the NHL traditional sense like a Bruce Boudreau or John Tortorella. 

Nill has also been public about wanting to look and keep all options open, which has given him carte blanche to not really follow-up a claim from a source close to the situation.