FanHouse Trevor Daley

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.

There are certainly at least two really good teams in the NHL's Western Conference. Defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit and fast-starting San Jose appear in the clear to duke it out for the right to play for the Stanley Cup later this year.

Of course, we know that anything can happen in a best-of-seven series. In addition, we still have half a season left to play. What we don't know is which team in this conference is set up to challenge either the Red Wings or Sharks. They've beaten - at least once - pretty much everyone who has stood in their way, including each other.

While the top of the conference appears to virtually locked in place at this point, there are still serious battles to be fought, especially for the last four positions in the West. Currently, eight teams are separated by just six points. St. Louis, the last-place team in the West, is just nine points out of eighth.

Fantastic game in Dallas on Monday night, as the Stars overcame a 3-1 deficit to pull out a 5-4 overtime win against the Detroit Red Wings.

The Stars fired 49 shots at Detroit goaltender Chris Osgood, which is the most shots a Detroit team has allowed since 1989. Brian Rafalski and Tomas Holmstrom scored a pair of goals in the first period, staking the Wings out to an early 2-0 lead. After Niklas Grossman scored his first career regular season goal for Dallas, Marian Hossa responded just a minute later to help Detroit take back its two-goal advantage.

Dallas, however, came out in the second period and unleashed a barrage of shots at Osgood -- 23 in the second period alone -- while Stephane Robidas and Mark Parrish tallied goals to tie the game, 3-3, heading into the third peiod.

On Monday, we told you about former Lightning head coach Barry Melrose who openly admitted that he is taking great delight in the struggles of the organization that fired him, not to mention the fact he's openly rooting for them to lose every game they play. Well, Melrose has to be loving this current nine-game losing streak Tampa Bay is on, as it dropped another one on Wednesday night in Buffalo, 4-2.

The Lightning actually jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first period, thanks to goals by Mark Recchi and Martin St. Louis.

With less than a minute to play in the opening period, Buffalo's Drew Stafford picked up a power play goal, which set the stage for Thomas Vanek to tie the game and, ultimately, give the Sabres the lead in the second period with a pair of goals, giving him a league-best 22 on the season. Vanek has four goals in his past three games, all Buffalo victories.

Jason Pominville picked up an empty net goal late in the third, while Ryan Miller stopped 26 shots in the win.