A lengthy to-do list: New head coach search another critical offseason task for Stars

What Jim Nill did on Friday is pretty foreign for the Stars organization.

The longtime Dallas GM fired head coach Pete DeBoer, who had the NHL’s best regular-season record over the past three seasons and also won six playoff rounds. When you look at Nill’s decisions to part ways with Lindy Ruff, Ken Hitchcock, Jim Montgomery and Rick Bowness, there was an obvious need for change that made the logic fairly transparent.

This one was a little more subtle.

For the team to go forward and take the next step, it became clear what needed to be done was a new coach. As much as DeBoer has been very successful on the ice, there was a tension behind the scenes that was tangible.

The manifestation of that problem was DeBoer’s decision to pull Jake Oettinger seven minutes into Game 5 of the Western Conference Final against Edmonton. In addition to the embarrassment that Oettinger faced in the arena and on national television, there also was a prickly feeling in the postgame press conference when DeBoer said Oettinger had lost six of seven playoff games to the Oilers, a semantic slip that people interpreted to reflect DeBoer’s feelings about the 26-year-old goalie.

After all, the Stars as a team had lost six of seven games to the Oilers – and lack of goal scoring played a huge role in the shortcomings. To hang it all on Oettinger didn’t feel right. Add to the fact that DeBoer said he hadn’t really talked to Oettinger when the two were available for season-ending interviews two days later seemed to again reflect on how the head coach interacts with his players.

Asked if the process ruined his relationship with Oettinger, DeBoer said, “I moved Jamie Benn to the fourth line. Does that ruin our relationship? When I healthy scratched Evgenii\] [Dadonov, who I’ve known since he was a 20-year-old, does that ruin our relationship? Those aren’t easy conversations. As a player, you don’t like that. I’m sure there are always hard feelings. Those are the decisions we make and we try to keep it as professional as we can. It’s all with one goal and that’s to try to keep the group moving forward.”

He added, “I don’t make those decisions lightly and I don’t make them not to hurt feelings. There’s nothing personal in it. There’s one motive and that’s how do we survive this and get it to a Game 6? I have to live with those consequences…I can’t make those decisions out of fear of doing this, I can’t. That’s not how I’m built.”

You can say that’s one of the reasons DeBoer has been successful in the NHL. He was clearly the decision-maker on the coaching staff, and he typically owned those decisions. That said, it could have worn on the relationship with the GM. DeBoer decided to play young defenseman Nils Lundkvist an average of 4:28 in 12 playoff games last season, and that might have contributed to wearing out Miro Heiskanen by the third round. Mix in the fact that Nill traded a first and fourth round pick to get Lundkvist from the Rangers back in 2022, and that decision probably was part of the mix.

Asked about the weight of the Oettinger decision on firing DeBoer, Nill said, “That’s a component of it, but there are other things that take place also. It’s one part of it, but there are other things that take place during the season. My job is to analyze everything during the year and where things are at, even the prior years. It was a component of it, but it wasn’t the final decision when we made this decision.”

Bottom line, Nill felt the organization could better move forward with a new voice in the room. Another part of Nill’s history that might have played a role in his decision is the fact Lindy Ruff entered the fourth year of his contract in 2016 without an extension. The team went from first in the Central to sixth in one season. Ruff was let go after that.

Could DeBoer have been a candidate to have the same problem had he not received a contract extension heading into the final year of his deal? Could Nill have risked a contract extension if there were chemistry problems?

There seems to be some traceable logic to everything that has happened.

Now, though, the Stars have to find a way to move forward in a Central Division where Colorado and Winnipeg are even hungrier, where Minnesota gets $13 million in additional cap space, where St. Louis is on the come-up, and Utah is knocking on the door. That’s not a small task.

“This was very hard,” Nill said. “You stand up here and you’ve been to the third round three years in a row. To sit up here and have to make this decision…but in the end I know what I have to do for the organization. That’s not disrespecting Pete; he’s a great coach, a good man and I respect him so much. But in the end, I have to do what I think is right for the organization moving forward.”

That’s an important step for Nill, because he has a tough summer ahead. He currently has about $5 million in cap space to fill six positions. And with Benn, Matt Duchene, Mikael Granlund, Dadonov, Colin Blackwell, Cody Ceci and Brendan Smith set to become unrestricted free agents, that’s a lot to fill.

Nill said he and Benn have already talked - the captain wants to be back and Nill wants him back. But the decisions on players like Duchene aren’t so matter-of-fact. That’s one reason you hear rumors of a potential Jason Robertson trade. Robertson has one year left on his deal at $7.75 million and he’s likely looking at a raise from that going forward. So, if the Stars trade Robertson, they can create cap space and can possibly get back some of the draft picks (or prospects) they lost in the last trade deadline.

Again, that’s a weighty decision.

Nill will also have to find the new coach to guide this group. Could he bring in AHL head coach Neil Graham and put this veteran coaching staff around him? Sure. Could he bring in a veteran like Gerard Gallant or Peter Laviolette and see what they can do? Absolutely. Could he promote Nasreddine to head coach and bring in Graham as an assistant? That’s also a possibility.

Honestly, there are many answers to these questions, and the GM should have some great choices to keep this team near the top of the mountain – or, more important, push it all the way to the peak.

“I’m starting the coaching process right away,” Nill said. “We have our scouting meetings coming up here next Thursday and Friday. That’s when we’ll really sit down and say, ‘Okay, we’ve got some decisions to make.’ Signing guys, we’ve got cap issues we’ve talked about, different things going on. It’ll be a hectic three weeks here, but we’ll get it done. I’ve got a great staff here.”

Bottom line, Nill has already made the toughest call of all, so the rest should be quite manageable.

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.