FanHouse Dave Tippett

The Coyotes didn't waste much time announcing the long-term replacement for Wayne Gretzky, who stepped down as coach and director of hockey operations on Thursday. Seven hours after Gretzky made his announcement, the club held a press conference to introduce Dave Tippett as their new bench boss.

The success of coaches in professional sports is difficult to predict. Bill Belichick was an abject failure in Cleveland, but is now considered one of the top coaches in all of sports. Flip Saunders did pretty well for himself in Minnesota, but could not bring a championship to Detroit. In the NHL, Claude Julien and Paul Maurice are two examples of coaches who got the proverbial walking papers and found great success at later jobs.

Since coaches are essentially hired to be fired, veteran NHL coach Marc Crawford has been fired. He's actually about to begin his fourth stop in the league, as the Dallas Stars hired him Thursday to replace the fired Dave Tippett.

When Joe Nieuwendyk was named the new Dallas Stars general manager nearly two weeks ago, speculation was he would probably retain coach Dave Tippett. After all, he knew Tippett and had worked with him in the past. In terms of performance, the Stars' injury-riddled season -- one year after a run to the Western Conference finals -- seemed to be a good reason to keep the coach around.

Instead, it appears Nieuwendyk wants his own guy. TSN is reporting that the Stars have fired Tippett after six years on the job.

The Stanley Cup won't be handed out until June, but this is the time when we see teams making runs at the playoffs. And you can't win the Cup if you don't make the playoffs. Race for the Cup is your daily check of where your favorite team stands as the season dwindles.

It's been a long year for coach Dave Tippett and the Dallas Stars. Injuries to guys like Brendan Morrow and Brad Richards have limited the effectiveness of the offense. Defenseman Sergei Zubov missed significant time, and goalie Marty Turco never looked right. The Stars made a nice run after the All-Star break, but a seventh straight loss - Monday night in Phoenix - means it's time to turn off the lights.

Caveat emptor. I'm sure Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks was aware of the phrase prior to his signing of Sean Avery this past summer, and if he wasn't, he most certainly is now.

Avery, the NHL's super-pest, never seemed to fit in the Stars locker room after signing a four-year, $15.5 million deal, clashing with veterans and failing to produce much of anything on the ice in his brief, 23-game tenure in Dallas. Then came December 2, 2008, when the Stars visited Dion Phaneuf and the Calgary Flames.

On Tuesday, ESPN hockey writer Pierre Lebrun penned an entry on his blog about Dallas Stars forward Loui Eriksson and his under-the-radar, meteoric rise to 30-goal scorer in the NHL.

The basic premise of the article was essentially: this guy has more goals than a host of star players, and you probably don't know who he is.

There was a time when Dallas Stars goalie Marty Turco was among the best in the National Hockey League. It appears as if those days are over, at least for this year, as the 33-year old netminder was lifted for the third time this season, after giving up five goals on just 19 shots Friday night. In the end, the Stars fell to the runaway locomotive that is the San Jose Sharks, 6-2.

Honestly, San Jose may never lose again, as it now has a league-best 39 points.

Turco's save percentage is just about ready to drop below the .870 mark, which is pretty hard to comprehend for an NHL goalie, and Stars head coach Dave Tippett sort of agrees, saying "our goaltender has to be better." Indeed he does. And while he wouldn't announce anything after the game, Tippett left open the possibility that Tobias Stephan could start Sunday's game against Edmonton. I guess the question is: could he really be any worse?

San Jose received a pair of goals from Dan Boyle, while Joe Pavelski, Milan Michalek and Rob Blake slipped shots behind the struggling Turco before he was lifted following the second period.

Evgeni Nabokov, making his second start since returning to the lineup, turned aside 25 of 27 shots in the win.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

After seeing the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs speed by us at Mach 2, it seems as if we're in for something of a re-run in the Conference Finals, as the higher seeds both held serve on home ice to take a 2-0 series lead -- something our roundtable participants seemed to think was sure to be something of a death sentence for the lower seeds.

After Game One in Pittsburgh, Flyers head coach John Stevens said he wanted his team to cut down on the turnovers and bring a more physical game to the ice for Game Two against the Penguins, but it hardly mattered as the Pens prevailed, 4-2. So while the Flyers did tighten things up a bit and raised the bar physically, it wasn't as if the Pens weren't able to answer. If anything, it couldn't help but remind me of the line plenty of folks got fed about the Lemieux/Jagr-led Pens of the 1990s -- that simply because the Pittsburgh was so potent offensively that they might have a difficult time playing against more physical and tight checking squads.

Well, it wasn't true then, and it isn't true now -- not when you've got a slab of beef like Evgeni Makin who's willing to take your best shot, get off the ice and punish you with his skill (his Game One slapper shorthanded will be on playoff highlight films forever) and then stick his forearm into the earflap of your most skilled player, knocking him into next week (Daniel Briere). Throw in a goal from a player like Maxime Talbot, and well, it's hard not to think that all hope is lost in Philadelphia.

Admittedly, I don't give the Dallas Stars all that much respect among the playoff-bound teams in the Western Conference. Sure, the Stars are excellent in the regular season, play an air-tight system, and have great special teams, but they also have a tendency to choke it all away once the post season starts.

Despite finishing with over 50 wins each of the past two seasons, and 41 wins the season before, the Dallas Stars haven't been past the first round of the playoffs since 2003, when they were knocked out in just the second round.

Whether it's the lack of offensive depth, Marty Turco's overrated goaltending ability, or Dave Tippett's lack of fire behind the bench, the Dallas Stars are just a team that, like the Atlanta Braves of baseball, just can't translate their formula for success to the post-season all that well.

So, do my FanHouse colleagues think the Dallas Stars are legit contenders? Can any of the second-tier teams, such as Calgary, Minnesota, Vancouver, and Colorado make a dent?

Now that the Dallas Stars have, once again, failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs during Dave Tippett's tenure as head coach, the media is getting the knives to out to be sharpened.

Does Dave Tippett deserve to be fired? In my opinion, NO!

Look at the Stars roster, which is full of softies like Mike Ribeiro, Eric Lindros, and Darryl Sydor, plus a whole whack of Scandinavian finesse players who don't possess a lot of offensive talent. Despite this rather weak looking roster, the Dallas Stars played an exceptional passive-defensive system and managed to rally and take the Canucks to a 7th game in their series after being down 3-1.

Special Teams? The Stars were 11th on the PK and 7th on the Power Play, which usually is a reflection of good coaching. The Stars were also the 2nd best team (behind Detroit) in shots against, and were extremely tough to score on.

Looking at Tippett's coaching record, he's certainly got an incredible track record ... during the regular season:

YEAR GM W L T OT WIN%  PLAYOFFS
02-03 82 46 17 15 4 0.677 - Lost in round 2
03-04 82 41 26 13 2 0.591 - Lost in round 1
05-06 82 53 23 0 6 0.683 - Lost in round 1
06-07 82 50 25 0 7 0.652 - Lost in round 1 

The Stars have done exceptionally well under Tippett's tenure during the regular season, but have won only one playoff round under his guidance. Given how two of those playoff losses were in a measly five games, one could conclude that Tippett doesn't have the right stuff to win in the playoffs.