A Season of NHL Decisions in Hindsight: Dave Tippett Firing

At the end of last season, Dallas Stars fans had little to look forward to.

The team missed the post-season for the first time in seven years, and injury troubles had kept most of the players out. The Sean Avery experiment had gone poorly, with him eventually being suspended for the season, and then waived to go play in Manhattan.

It was time for a change, as many fans were concerned about the future of long-time Stars' leaders such as Mike Modano, Sergei Zubov and Marty Turco. Not knowing how much longer these key franchise elements would remain in Dallas, and therefore how long it would be before they would not have a chance at winning a Stanley Cup in a Stars' uniform, fans were thirsty for success.

The 2009-10 season began with a bang when the team fired co-General Managers Brett Hull and Les Jackson, who were replaced by former Stars' player Joe Nieuwendyk.

His first order of business was to fire long-time head coach Dave Tippett, just a week after he signed a new contract, and to replace him with an experienced Marc Crawford.

Now, it is only suiting that Tippett was hired as head coach at the end of the previous year Dallas missed the post-season (2001-02) and then fired when he couldn't get them to reach it again, but in retrospect, it may have been a little too bold of Nieuwendyk, and not in the best interests of the team.

Crawford on the other hand, began his coaching career in 1994-95 with the Quebec Nordiques, and was off-and-on as a coach since then with teams such as the Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings and Colorado Avalanche.

To Nieuwendyk's credit, Tippett had limited playoff success, advancing out of the post-season just twice in his career as the Dallas bench boss.

Tippett would go on to sign with Phoenix quickly after his firing, and the firing of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky from the Coyotes' organization. Taking over a team of young no-names in the middle of a media  frenzy, the task ahead seemed more than difficult for Tippett.

He came, he saw, and he conquered however. Tippett would lead the team to its first playoff appearance in almost 10 years, and as a home seed, at that. The team also finished with the most points in franchise history at 107, which put them fourth in the Western Conference going into the playoffs.

Following years of empty seats, the Jobing.com Arena was the place to be in the Phoenix area near the end of the season, and the team reached a new wave of fans both in the city and globally.

Unfortunately, the team would lose in not-so-dramatic fashion in game seven of their first round series against the Detroit Red Wings, but showed some promise in earlier games in the series.

Compare that to the Stars' season, and Tippett must be laughing. The Stars missed the playoffs for the second-straight year, despite a good start to the season. The team finished with just 88 points, which was good enough for the bottom spot of the Pacific Division.

It forces fans to think about what could have been. Seeing what Tippett did with a young team not used to success must depress Dallas fans, a team that had finally been healthy for the majority of the year, and that seemed to have a real chance at making a run for the cup.

Dallas was abysmal for much of the second-half of the season, and fan support dropped as such. Firing Tippett may have cost the Stars not only a chance for a good playoff run, but also money as a result of the dropoff of fans at the games.

To Crawford's credit, he was without Modano for much of the end of the season and the team did have a shot at making the playoffs with about ten games left, but none of that really matters when the team finishes twelfth in the conference.

Tippett (and his now-shaved mustache) were as much a key feature of the Stars' organization as were the  veteran players he coached, and perhaps Nieuwendyk should have given him a chance to coach the team another season with healthy players and a new GM.

Oh, and as salt in the wound, Tippett was nominated for, and will likely go on to win, the NHL's Jack Adams Award, awarded to the best coach of the season.

In hindsight, was the move good or bad for the Dallas Stars?