New Stars Coach Marc Crawford

Earlier today, the Dallas Stars officially announced that Marc Crawford will be the new coach for the Dallas Stars. Marc Crawford has spent 13 seasons in the NHL with the Colorado Avalanche and spent the final year before the Avalanche moved from Quebec City, then from 1995-1998 he spent 3 seasons with the Avalanche where he had the best part of his coaching career where he won the Stanley Cup in 1996 and was the head coach of the Canadian National Team in 1998 in Nagano, Japan where the Canada lost to the Czech Republic in 1998, from the 1998-2006 he spent time with the Vancouver Canucks where his career took a nose down from a Stanley Cup and a Olympic Gold Medal Game to failing to make the playoffs 3 times and only won a handful of playoff games. The last 2 years he's been with the Los Angeles Kings where they have finished last 2 seasons in the Pacific Division. For new Dallas Stars G.M. Joe Nieuwendyk, he's certainly moving at a rapid pace to put his hand on things for the Dallas Stars.

This is simply a kick in the gut for Dave Tippett where he the odds were stacked against him as he had 3 of his best players injured for most of the year and the Sean Avery situation blow up in his face. In addition, he was doing the best job possible and was able to help keep the Stars in the playoff hunt until the last couple of weeks of the regular season. He should be given at least one more year to prove that he could get this team to become a Cup contender, he also had no decent backup goaltender and they didn't get the defenseman situation worked out and it blew up in the face with Sergei Zubov injured for the majority of the last 2 seasons. This was one of the most unexpected moves the Stars have made in a long time and I thought it was a bad descion.

Just because your a great player doesn't mean you will be a great head coach or G.M. Look at Wayne Gretzky in Phoenix right now. He has done very little to improve the Phoenix Coyotes franchise on or off the ice and the team is currently under NHL Control.

I'm very hopeful that Dave Tippett will be hired pretty quickly in the NHL and has a lot to offer to a team especially on offense and someone should hire him.

He's been an apprentice for the GMs for both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Florida Panthers since he announced his retirement a couple of years ago, but he won't have much time to get experience as both the NHL Draft on June 26 and 27 then Free Agency starts up on July 1.

I hope he knows what he's doing because if he works out for the team, this could have been a fantastic decision for the team, but if he doesn't work out very well, this could be very bad for his GM Career and you could have a lot of upset fans about a head coach in which given the time, could have done something really big next year.