Call to the Hall: Reminiscing on Ken Hitchcock and a golden age of Stars hockey

Give Ken Hitchcock all of the praise.

As the former Stars coach goes into the Hockey Hall of Fame, bestow upon him accolades, kudos and as much love as you can muster.

Heck, line up a cadre of former netminders and let them lather him up with sapient, salient praise-singing. He deserves it all.

And when you’re done, let me offer a simple thank you. That’s the thought I’ve pondered this past month as Hitch has been honored in Dallas by being inducted into the Stars Hall of Fame and now in Toronto for the big one. I look back and think how lucky I have been to work with this guy and witness his handiwork.

Ken Hitchcock has a love for hockey that is contagious. It started, of course, in Edmonton where he spent a decade coaching Midget AAA. It continued on through Kamloops and Philadelphia and Kalamazoo until he landed in Dallas. There, he was the perfect man at the perfect time for a professional sports organization that few could have predicted would take the step that it eventually did.

Bob Gainey is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and he had his successes as a head coach in Minnesota and Dallas. But as a Hall-of-Fame player, Gainey maybe lacked one club in the golf bag of an NHL bench boss – he kind of just expected everyone to be motivated to give 100 percent every game. That’s an oversimplification, but the bottom line is that Gainey probably lacked the dogged determination to demand excellence from the players every single day.

That’s one of the reasons he stepped aside after 415 NHL games and put Hitch in charge in the winter of 1996. The cherubic task-master had endured a lifetime of coaching challenges before he even made it to the Stars. He knew how to prod some of the best talent in the world. He had used his own discipline to cut half his body weight in order to pursue his coaching dream. He simply had the heart of a tiger underneath those rosy cheeks.

And Gainey knew that.

That’s one of the reasons the Dallas GM stood by Hitchcock no matter how much the players pushed back. As much as Ken Hitchcock was a big part of driving the Stars to the 1999 Stanley Cup, he couldn’t have done it without the backing of Gainey and assistant coaches Rick Wilson and Doug Jarvis. They supported his ideas. They supported his demands, they stood up to a group that included six future Hall-of-Fame players and said to follow the guy who just got here.

One of the reasons why was because of Hitchcock’s drive for perfection. I remember one practice on the road in March of his first year. We were at “The Pond” in Anaheim on a Sunday afternoon, going through a routine workout for a team that was 20-31-12 at the time and playing out the string in a non-playoff year. Hitch felt that maybe his lads weren’t serious enough and stopped the skating to call everyone to center ice.

He then unleashed a pointed speech that told everyone where he was at.

The phrase that most stuck in my mind was that he was “not interested in coaching a [bleeping] .500 team,” and that if anyone was interested in playing for a [bleeping] .500 team then they could seek employment someplace else.

I don’t know how the players took it, but it stuck with me.

The Stars that season limped home and restructured in the summer by adding Pat Verbeek and Dave Reid in free agency, as well as Sergei Zubov in a trade. Mix that in with the acquisitions of Joe Nieuwendyk and Darryl Sydor from the 1995-96 season and the Stars were cooking.

Dallas went 48-26-8 for the first 100-point season (104) in Dallas/Minnesota franchise history. Gainey kept getting better players – adding the likes of Ed Belfour and Brett Hull – and Hitchcock kept pushing the right buttons. It was a wonderful thing to watch.

In the meantime, the hard-driving coach was a prince with the fans and the media. He shared his knowledge of the game willingly and made a lot of people fall in love with hockey. Whether it was in a chat at a Starbucks with a random fan or bringing radio guys into his office for a tutorial, Hitchcock was as responsible for the growth of the game in Texas as anyone.

In fact, when he was honored by the Stars Hall of Fame last month, he said that seeing how the game has grown in the state is one of his proudest accomplishments. You could tell at the time he knew exactly what he was doing. It took me a little while to appreciate just what an influence he had on so many people, but I do now. You look at that group now, and it was an amazing conglomeration of characters and personalities that somehow found a way to make a little bit of sports history.

So now they get the fancy jackets, the flashy rings, the crystal plaques and the praise they so richly deserve.

I just want to add my thanks on top of all that. My guess is there are plenty of others in this area who feel the same way.

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 Twitter @MikeHeika.