The Stars have won 8 road games. If they win out they'll win 20, but that isn't going to happen. So let's move on to other things.

They have this 3 game trip prior to the Olympic break and on paper it looks terrific. Really, it does.

The trip starts in Chicago where they pumped the Hawks back in October - when they used to win on the road -and they are 2-0 against the Windy City Darlings this season.

Next up, the Saddledome in Calgary where they hammered the Flames 5-2, again back in October, and are 2-1 against the recently remodeled Sutterites. ( By the way, that was one of their four games in which they have pumped a team by more than 3 goals)

Finally, they'll wrap it up in the desert where they used to always win and usually would shutout the Coyotes. Eight goals against in the two games played there this year suggests that those days are over.

Ilya Bryzgalov is a problem - I say run him - ya, run the big Russian, that's my birthday wish - Splattered Bryzgalov.

Stars excluded, this seems to be moment in time within the 2009-10 season to go on a run (both good and bad) if you are an NHL team.

The Capitals have won 12 straight overall, 9 straight at home.

The Senators have won 11 in a row and 6 in succession on the road.

The Ducks have won their last 9 games at home.

The Kings have rattled off 8 consecutive victories.

The NHL Coyotes have “won” 5 in a row. (Although a 0-0 tie decided by an 11 round penalty shot contest should hardly be categorized as a victory)

On the dark cloud side, the Bruins have lost their last 9, the Oilers have lost 8 in a row on the road, and the Islanders have dropped 6 straight.

Of course, as we bring it home, and full circle, our little Stars have yet to string 3 wins together (The dreadful Leafs are the only other club to join in that category) and yet they have managed to also avoid any losing skids of more than 3 games.

Consistent excellence? Prolonged durations of constructive depression? What are those?

Around here we’re whiplashing our way through a Jekyll and Hyde home/road season that continues to be perplexingly vexing in it’s inconsistency.

Suck on that Ovechkin!

After you peruse these consider this, the Detroit Red Wings have the best coach in hockey in Mike Babcock and he is every bit as hard driving and demanding as Hitch and his ilk. The difference though is that the organization he coaches for puts their young players where young players should be – in the minors. When they are ready for the National Hockey League they elevate them. Case in point, goalie Jimmy Howard who has almost single-handedly kept them in the playoff hunt.

Bad organizations make excuses for pressing young players into impact roles.

Great ones develop their youth, and expect no excuses when they finally arrive.

The Detroit Red Wings are a great organization.

The Columbus Blue Jackets currently aren’t, and the jury is out on whether they ever will be.


CNN/Sports Illustrated / Hitchcock firing another ominous sign for veteran NHL coaches
Jim Kelley

Ken Hitchcock has a Stanley Cup ring that he richly deserves, despite the controversial winning goal by Brett Hull. He has 533 NHL wins, good for 13th all time in a league that seldom celebrates coaching success. He was part of Team Canada's gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics. He has the respect and even admiration of many NHL GMs who appreciate his indefatigable work ethic and commitment to defense, and their value in shaping a team's identity.

Hitchcock led the Blue Jackets to the only NHL playoff appearance in their history. He will reprise his role with Team Canada in Vancouver. It's a better than even chance that he'll be part of a medal-winning effort once again.

But what the 58-year-old Hitchcock doesn't have, or so it seems, is a rapport with young players.

Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson relieved Hitchcock of his head coaching duties on Wednesday, a day after an uninspired 5-1 loss to a team, the Colorado Avalanche, that is having success largely because of the young players in its lineup. In today's NHL, not relating to youth appears to be the No. 1 reason why good coaches with a world of experience in doing things their way are finding themselves on the unemployment line.

Not that anyone will admit that.

"This season has been very disappointing for the Blue Jackets organization and our fans and the responsibility for that rests with all of us from management to the coaches and players," Howson said in a press release. "Hitch worked tirelessly to build an identity for this team that was missing before he arrived and he deserves a great deal of credit for those efforts. He earned and received the opportunity to turn things around this season, but unfortunately that has not happened and it has become apparent that change is in the best interest of our organization."

Howson's not wrong and he's not being unfair. He just left out the part that has been whispered about Hitchcock even last season when Columbus had some success and a playoff appearance, and especially since mid-November.

Peopled with young players including Olympian Rick Nash up front and the talented but still inexperienced Steve Mason in goal, the Blue Jackets simply weren't connecting with their coach. Throw in the fact that they lost 2008 first-round draft pick Nikita Filatov to Russia reportedly because he didn't like Hitchcock using ice time as a carrot and stick to convince him to play defense, and the veteran coach clearly had problems that went beyond Mason's spectacular fall-off from a season ago. Hitchcock then became the 23rd NHL head coach who has been replaced since June 2008. Anyone who says they are surprised is either lying or horribly uninformed.

Eighteen months and a nearly 75 percent turnover rate behind the benches. The amazing thing regarding Hitchcock's tenure in Columbus (he had previously been fired in Dallas and Philadelphia) is that he lasted as long as he did. He coached there for 26 months, his winning record (125-123-36) depending upon what you think of overtime and shootouts, but he was 10-20-7 since Nov. 19 and his 22-26-9 overall was good for 14th place in the Western Conference. That meant Hitchcock, who is also said to have had conflicts with the superbly talented but painfully young Derick Brassard, was out of time.

The surprising thing is that Hitchcock wasn't replaced by an up-and-comer from the AHL or even a hot junior coach, the two trendy replacements for aging bench bosses because they are said to better "relate" to today's youth-rushed talent. Howson turned to 54-year-old assistant coach Claude Noel, if only on an interim basis.

Since the salary cap took hold coming out of the 2004-05 lockout, young players have become something of a precious commodity in the league. Entry-level contracts come cheap, far cheaper than experienced players even if they are pretty much just third- or fourth-line performers. Cheap is good for franchises that yearn to stay well under what is now seen as an excessively high cap figure of $56.8 million. That opens the door to youngsters, many of whom are seen as talent that must produce now. The experienced veterans, it is hoped, will come later.

Fine for the kids, especially the truly talented ones, but woe to the coach who prefers players who know their role and how to execute it.

Are you reading this Andy Murray? Did the St. Louis Blues at least tell you the truth behind closed doors?

No GM is going to send a coach off into his good night with the reputation of not being able to work with kids. That's why you hear things like "the team was not progressing" even though many of the players currently on the St. Louis and Columbus rosters were simply going through the learning experience that comes with having success early and then falling back as teams play against them with greater intensity.

Still, you have to wonder if Murray or Hitchcock will get another chance in the now youth-conscious NHL. You also have to wonder if once the Blue Jackets move past Noel (or the 54-yer old shows them that he can relate to their kids), Howson won't be placing a call to Filatov.

Mother Russia looks nice right now, but NHL money, a spot on Nash's wing and no one harping about defensive play can be a powerful lure...especially for a GM who has lost a potential franchise player.




ESPN / Post-lockout era not kind to Hitchcock
Burnside By Scott Burnside

Let's start with this.

No one talks the game of hockey better than Ken Hitchcock.

No one better articulates the nuances of the game, the back story of how and why a player or team plays, how and why they react under certain situations, what makes them tick or not.

Watch how reporters congregate around Hitchcock wherever he happens to be, like moths to a flame.

It was so in Philadelphia when he coached in that hockey hotbed, and ask any reporter who covered the team if they miss their daily hockey chats with the funny, insightful, often biting Hitchcock.

It was so when reporters gathered for the Canadian Olympic orientation camp this past August in Calgary, where Hitchcock was reprising his role as an assistant with the Canadian team.

And it will be so when reporters from around the world gather to cover the Olympic hockey tournament in Vancouver in a little more than a week.

The difference is, when Hitchcock arrives in Vancouver, he will speak not as an NHL coach, but an unemployed one, as he was relieved of his duties as the bench boss of the Columbus Blue Jackets late Wednesday afternoon.

The fact the firing doesn't come as much of a shock for a team that has stumbled through the first 58 games of this season (22-27-9) says as much about the Blue Jackets organization as it does Hitchcock's ability as a coach.

Still, the post-lockout NHL has not been kind to Hitchcock.

After taking the Philadelphia Flyers to Game 7 of the 2004 Eastern Conference finals, a series they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champs from Tampa Bay, Hitchcock's Flyers were waxed in the first round in 2006 by a faster, more skilled Buffalo team. Philly was embarrassed twice in that series by scores of 8-2 and 7-1, a harbinger of what was to come for Hitchcock and the Flyers.

The team started the next season off poorly and Hitchcock was fired on Oct. 22. The Flyers went on to finish dead last in the NHL, while Hitchcock was unemployed for exactly one month before Columbus snapped him up.

The Blue Jackets were a moribund franchise that had quickly fiddled away the honeymoon period of their existence in Columbus. Hitchcock, in large part because of his ability to articulate the game, soon became the face of the franchise, even bigger than star player Rick Nash.

He coached his brains out and the Blue Jackets went 28-29-5 through the balance of the 2006-07 season. The team was 34-36-12 in his first full season in Columbus before breaking through last season as he guided the Jackets to the playoffs for the first time. The Blue Jackets swooned down the stretch in 2008-09, winning just twice in their last eight games and were swept in the first round by second-seeded Detroit.

But the buzz returned to Columbus with the expectation that this team was ready to step forward again this season, following the trends of other young teams like Pittsburgh and Washington.

It didn't happen. Not even close.

Steve Mason, last season's rookie of the year and the main reason the Blue Jackets enjoyed such success, went off the rails. The young players who were supposed to carry the team forward, like Nikita Filatov, Jakub Voracek, Derick Brassard and Derek Dorsett, by and large did not progress in the way the team needed. (Filatov went home to Russia in a snit over playing time.) Brassard has just seven goals, Voracek eight.

Was that Hitchcock's fault, an inability to coax more out of young players? Or was it a failure on the part of GM Scott Howson to provide the appropriate tools and leadership to get the team out of the funk that saw it win just three times in 24 outings between Nov. 21 and Jan. 5?

Hitchcock, always tough on his players and especially tough on his top players, was credited with helping franchise forward Nash develop into a complete hockey player. If it's true Nash chafed under Hitchcock's tutelage, it wouldn't be the first star player to be at odds with a coach with a big personality. If it's true, it will now be up to Nash to show he is a leader and not a coach killer.

Back in 2005-06, Hitchcock's Flyers seemed ill-suited to play in the post-lockout NHL. GM Bob Clarke also fell on the sword, which seemed to suggest it was as much the tools in the box as the man wielding them.

This time, Hitchcock took the fall alone. Time will tell whether Howson found the right handyman behind the bench in longtime minor league coach Claude Noel, who takes over on an interim basis, or just a cheap replacement for the highly paid, high-profile Hitchcock.

As for Hitchcock, we figure he won't be long unemployed again, although it may take him longer than a month. His is a big personality, and we imagine him going toe to toe with the media in Toronto if GM Brian Burke grows tired of Ron Wilson's failures there. And it's certainly not hard to imagine Hitchcock returning to his roots in Western Canada if things continue to go south in Calgary and ownership decides to de-Sutter the Flames this offseason.

In the interim, there are the Olympics. A gold medal turn by Canada in Vancouver over the next few weeks will go a long way in restoring the mythology surrounding Hitchcock as one of the game's great coaching minds.

A failure there will extend Hitchcock's post-lockout misery and further tarnish the reputation of a man who can talk the game like no one else, but whose ability to coach the new game is now, sadly, in question.

One name that would be intriguing would be Mark Cuban.

With more and more current sports team owners moving to expand their holdings in an arena, it would make sense to a complete gaze-through-the-window observer like me that Cuban would be interested in 100% of what goes on at AAC.

Mario Lemieux's group is said to be making a bid for the Pirates, Ted Leonsis is after the basketball squad in Washington, and there are more.

I have no idea that Mark Cuban would want to add the Stars but man would he be welcome on a lot of different levels, especially in marketing and forward thinking.

If not him then hopefully someone with equal passion and pocket wad.

In the meantime, Mr. Hicks can rest assured that all who have been involved with the Stars since he bought the club from Norm Green feel that he could not have been a better owner and that there would not be a banner at AAC without him.

The BJs have struggled since opening with a strong 12-6-2 mark over their first 20 games.

They endured a disastrous December (2-9-5) and were treading water lately with a 4-4 record over their last 8 games when the blade of the guilitine came down on Hitch.

So why now?

Here are a few probabilities:

- Since the firing comes right after getting drilled in Denver by the Avs young pups I have to think the regression of Columbus' youthful players Mason, Brassard, Voracek, even Nash, had something to do with it - not to mention the decision by the talented but soft Filatov to run back to Russia.

-- They open a six game homestand against the Stars tomorrow. Can you say "public relations move"? Good luck selling hope, again.

-- The Olympic break will afford interm coach Claude Noel a mini training camp (Hitch will be helping coach Canada at that time)

-- Maybe the fact they are 4-14 in games decided by three or more goals had an impact too. But then again the Stars have a 3-10 mark in blowouts, so...

-- And of course they are 14th out of 15 teams in the conference right now. That gets coaches in trouble with their GMs and their GMs with their Presidents and their Presidents with their owner. Especially in orginizations that allow the tail to wag the dog.

Anyway, I feel bad for Hitch. He seemed to be building something promising in the Buckeye State but a sophmore belly flop from his goalie seemed to undermine the good and halt the progress.

He'll be alright, it's not like he hasn't been through this before - in Dallas and in Philly - and firing the coach seems more like a houskeeping chore or a habit now days. Just consider that nine of the fifteen Western Conference clubs have now changed their bench boss in the past two seasons. Swiffer Wet Mops are less disposable.

Take special notice of the half million Canadians who were glued to curling - Curling! (It’s an Olympic sport this year you know), the throng that watched the fancy boy skating, and also the paltry quarter million that bothered to focus their gaze on that embarrassing multi-colored milling-about on the gridiron in South Florida.

1. NHL, Canucks at Maple Leafs, Saturday, CBC: 2,173,000

2. NHL, Oilers at Flames, Saturday, CBC: 1,036,000

3. NHL, Canadiens at Senators, Saturday, CBC: 1,032,000

4. Hockey Night In Canada pre-game show, Saturday, CBC: 948,000

5. NHL, Maple Leafs at Devils, Friday, TSN: 774,000

6. Curling, Tournament of Hearts (afternoon), Sunday, TSN: 694,000

7. Curling, Tournament of Hearts (evening), Sunday, TSN: 584,000

8. Hockey, Hockey Day In Canada (5 p.m.), Saturday, CBC: 464,000

9. Curling, Tournament of Hearts (morning), Sunday, TSN: 438,000

10. Figure skating, Canadian championships gala, Sunday, CBC: 309,000

11. Hockey, Hockey Day In Canada (noon), Saturday, CBC: 283,000

12. TSN The Reporters, Sunday, TSN: 259,000

13. Tennis, Australian Open men's final, Sunday, TSN: 246,000

14. Tennis, Australian Open women's final, Saturday, TSN: 239,000

15. NFL, Pro Bowl, Sunday, TSN2: 230,000

My question is; if you could somehow put Canadian Idol, CSI, Celebrity Apprentice or any other ratings juggernaut on ice would every Canadian from Prince Rupert to Goose Bay watch it?

Toronto gets:
Phaneuf
Sjostrom
prospect Keith Aulie

JS Giguere

Calgary gets:
Niklas Hagman
Jamal Mayers
Matt Stajan
Ian White

Anaheim gets:
Jason Blake
Vesa Toskala

Those who believed this type of deal was impossible due to budgets and cap restraints let me at least suggest this little caveat pertaining to two of the three parties.

The NHL bottom feeding Leafs are coached by Ron Wilson. He will coach Team USA at the Olympics and his boss in Toronto, Brian Burke, is also the Manager for the American entry in Vancouver. Do you think firing the coach was ever an option?

In Calgary the team has gone from Cup contender in many peoples eyes to out of the top 8 in the Western Conference. The head coach is the G.M.’s brother – and is in his first season behind the Flames bench. Brent Sutter is the 4th coach in the last 5 seasons for Calgary. Do you think firing the coach was ever an option?

Watching Mike Modano take a lot of days off and benefit from it by lighting up the night (and opposing goalies) has been a lesson in the overratedness of practice.

“Not a game, not a game. We’re talking about practice.”

Right after a dreadful loss at Philadephia a weary, unengaged looking Modano was excused from the between games practice in Montreal by the frustrated, and bewildered coaching staff. The next night Modano played an inspired game, scored a goal and has followed that with a run of outstanding play punctuated with 5 goals in the 7 games.

So was it the 39 year old body that needed the respite?

No, turns out it was his mind.

Mike says it’s the meetings and the talk and the thinking about things that grinds a guy down, especially those rare individuals who play into their late 30s. (Reminds me of that old story about Rick Chartraw’s retirement. Chartraw was asked if it was the grind of the schedule that made him call it quits and he replied, “No, I just got tired of showering.”)

I don’t think any other sport puts as much into their practice time as hockey does - it’s always full speed, full equipment, full contact – even on game days. Baseball rarely raises it’s heartbeat. Basketball? Remember that Iverson thing? And football, well at least they hit from time to time but they have a lot of those no pads walkthroughs, etc. Bottom line, I have yet to hear a young kid dreaming of playing hockey for a living say, “I’m gonna practice in the NHL!”

Some day the high forehead individuals that decide how often they practice will do away with the habit - and that’s what it is, a habit – of the game day morning skate. (Why in the world would you conduct a practice on the same day you will ask your players to exert 100% of their energy and attention in a game?! That’s just dumb.)

Dumb, is not a word ever associated with Mike Modano.

Smart, is how the Stars are handling him.

And if this successful arrangement continues to bear fruit we’ll soon be talking about “Playoffs” – right Jim Mora?

1. His own helmet
   
   
2. Your helmet
   
   
3. A cd box set of the group Helmet’s music
   
   
4. A pillow case filled with cans of Progresso soup
   
   
5. If it’s a spectator, his own shoe (this is called The Milbury Maneuver)
   
   
6. A 5-Knuckle Meat Soother
   
   
7. A plastic ice bag filled with bars of soap
   
   
8. That rope knot pain inducer thingy used on 007’s marbles in Casino Royal
   
   
9. A sack of his own feces
   
   
10. Your dad Boris
    

In case you haven’t heard, the Stars haven’t had a lot of luck on the road this year - their success rate has been about equal to that of a opossum family making the trek across I-35 - only with a little less blood and guts.

5 Things Stars Should Bring on Future Road Trips:

1. Bill Oellermann…the stentorian voice of AAC could read the starting lineup in the Stars room just prior to taking the ice then stand at the door as they exit and bellow, “Heeeeeerrrrrre they come, your, Dallas, Staaaaarrrssss!”. Then, drop by the bench and announce when there is “One Minute remaining in the ____ period."
   
   
2. Ice Girls…for the aesthetics
   
   
3. Celena Rae…the anthem songstress is their Kate Smith (or BJ Thomas). She can belt out the Star Spangled Banner right after Bill finishes his bit.
   
   
4. All Blacks…its time to dump the lily Whites and don the menacing all Black jerseys on the road. They’ll travel better, will match the sea of black Tumi luggage that they cart around with them, and will intimidate the opponent like they currently do in downtown Big D.
   
   
5. Brad Richard’s line, one more save, their powerplay, some form of penalty killing mechanism, a 4th goal for, body contact, and the throbbing throng of leather-throated, jersey-clad Stars fans that amplify every happening during tilts at AAC.
   

Note to Mr. Hicks: We might need a bigger plane.

By TERRY JONES, QMI Agency
• The Oilers have cancelled today's skills competition. No skill.
• City police decided not to issue speeding tickets to Edmonton drivers for the rest of the month. Instead they are issuing Oilers tickets.
• A seven-year-old boy involved in a custody case told the judge he'd been beaten by both his parents and several close relatives. The judge granted temporary custody to the Oilers. They don't beat anybody.
• It was after the Oilers lost in San Jose last weekend when one came from Edmonton fans at the game. The two fans had bags on their heads. The name bar on the back of one sweater one read: "I know". On the other it said: "We suck."

Ahhh, the humor of misery.

It is, because many times in past the Oilers on home ice are a remedy, written on a prescription, with a laxative chaser, for whatever is ailing the Dallas Stars at that given time.

Last night it was a 10 game road winless streak.

This time the Oilers gave them a weeks supply of turnovers, a rookie goalie, and two tablespoons of Jason Strudwick, and, despite some late game nausea, the Stars felt much better as they headed to the airport bound for Denver with a one game road win streak buoying them.

MALADROITS NEED NOT APPLY

The firing of tough guy George Laraque in Montreal is the public face of what has been happening behind the scenes for a few years now, the eradication of the one-dimensional “ice fighter”.

First it was the abolishing of the staged fight. Then the streamlining of the game itself which put a premium on skating and skill – two things most of the mammoth, bench-stapled tough guys were, or are, deficient in.

Bottom line, they aren’t NHL caliber hockey players.

There will always be a place for rugged individuals who can play the game and are willing to stick up for teammates but the 2 minute a game fight specialist is about to go extinct.

STAT SCHOOL

Did you happen to catch my Olympic quality, blow your mind, razorific, stat of stats that I unearthed during an epiphytical afternoon of number crunching in Vancouver?

Over the Stars first 50 games this season the team that wins the second period has a record of 33-4-1.

Ya, un-freakin’- believable isn’t it? And don’t worry, the mind recovers after being blown. Well, most do.

Ever seen Rich Gannon and Joe Nieuwendyk in the same place?

I’m thinking our Joe may have been moonlighting all those years.

If you said "officiating and goaltending", you agree with me and are keenly perceptive.

If you didn’t, you are either severely optically challenged or are a mouth-breathing dipsh** - or both. (I demand compliance from my disciples)

Evidence on the officiating side is mounting. The Burrows-Auger affair, the Stars-Wings Shootout “review”, and the general lack of consistency and accuracy in arbiting the games.

As for the goalies, lately “pulling your goalie” has gone from a juvenile (yet amusing) euphemism and seldom used coaching ploy to an every game occurrence. Last Tuesday, the night Turco got yanked in Philly, 6 of the 9 goalies who started games didn’t finish them, and another 6 in the 10 games played last night got the hook, 5 of them “Olympic Quality” netminders! WTF?

For the zebras it might be the travel that has them worn down and off their game. They don’t cruise around on a G5, they travel commercial, which now days can be a meandering, novacaine-free root canal, and they do so on the day of a game.

The targets are feeling the effects of too many games in short periods of time. The attention to detail in front of them is deficient as teammates try to play with weary legs and minds.

For some, the two-week Olympic break can’t get here soon enough and should help re-fuel the tank.

But for a select few who will be involved in the Games the worst might come on the other side.

If that is the case they may want to install a revolving door in front of both nets and issue extra noise-canceling ear buds for the referees.

Funny joke from an exacerbated former goaltender/analyst:

How many Stars fans does it take to change a light bulb?

Four.

One to change the light bulb, and three to stand around and talk about how great the old bulb was back in the late 90s.

But I digress.

Talking about how great the Stars goaltending has been is probably not the topic most people have on their mind right now but the cold reality is that the Stars have been blessed with stable excellence in net for well over a decade.

Eddie Belfour arrived on the scene in the summer of 1997 and then put together a stellar body of work over his five years – especially in the post season.

Marty Turco took over the number one job to start the 2002-2003 season and has taken claim to virtually every franchise goaltending record since.

However.

A juxtaposition of the two talented target’s tenure (marvelous alliteration by me) reveals a slow expansion of their goals against average thru the years - a shared ballooning that would support a sense of inevitability to the growing need to once again, pass the torch.

Of course stats are only part of the equation; these two also share an expiration of contracts. The Eagles deal was up at the end of the 01-02 season just as Marty’s is set to expire at the conclusion of this season.

What the Stars don’t seem to have this time though is an heir apparent.

Turco was brashly demanding Belfour’s mantle back in that 2001-2002 season. His stats were better, and his presence was unsettling to Eddie who was also dealing with an increasingly tempestuous relationship with Hitch.

Fast-forward eight years and there is no young, talented goaltender ready to take the net over.

Mike Smith might have been that guy but he was sacrificed in the Brad Richards trade.

Jonas Gustafsson was a targeted “next one” this summer but decided to sign in Toronto.

So if we are witnessing the final months of another chapter in the lineage of larceny in the pipes in Dallas then the organization’s birddogs better have eyes peeled for a replacement, because it’s the most important position in the sport - Turco and Belfour have proved that, and spoiled us.