As soon as the Dallas Stars made the decision to relieve Joe Nieuwendyk of his general manager duties, the die was cast for new general manager Jim Nill to bring in a new head coach rather than exercise its contractual option to bring Glen Gulutzan back for a third season.
Earlier today, the news became official. The Stars have fired the 41-year-old Gulutzan, along with assistant coach Paul Jerrard. The club will retain Curt Fraser as an assistant, along with goaltending coach Mike Valley.
Gulutzan's Stars narrowly missed the playoffs in both of his two seasons behind the bench, getting eliminated from postseason contention in their next-to-last game of the regular season. The same fate befell his predecessor, Marc Crawford, who needed a win in Minnesota on the final day of the 2010-11 season to get into the playoffs. A few weeks later, Crawford was fired.
Gulutzan is a bright and energetic young coach. I have little doubt that he will resurface with another NHL head coaching job at some point. However, beyond missing out on the playoffs, there were several on-ice problems with the team that went largely unsolved during Gully's tenure:
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Back-to-back woes: The Stars had the NHL's worst record in the second half of back-to-back games, which greatly contributed to falling slightly short of the playoffs.
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Lack of discipline: The Stars took too many penalties in both of Gulutzan's seasons. In 2011-12, the team ranked 27th in the NHL in terms of number of penalties taken. This year, despite the departures of penalty-prone players Steve Ott, Sheldon Souray and, eventually, Brenden Morrow, Dallas ranked 28th.
* The Stars' commitment to team defense was inconsistent in 2011-12 and got worse this year. The club overrelied on Kari Lehtonen to keep games close.
In fairness to Gulutzan, he didn't have nearly as much talent depth to work on his roster as many of the teams that they played. There was also a lot of roster turnover, especially this season. Even so, the Stars usually played hard and didn't quit on games. That reflected well on their leadership. All in all, I would say that Gulutzan's 66-57-9 record as the Dallas head coach represented slight overachievement relative to the depth and experience of the roster in his two seasons.
It is not Nill's style to rush into a decision, so I would not expect the Stars to follow up with a quick announcement of the team's next bench boss. There will be numerous candidates to consider, including internal candidates Bennett and Texas Stars head coach Willie Desjardins. However, I think it's more likely than not that the next Stars coach will come from outside the organization as Nill establishes a new regime.
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