We'd like to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to Mike for taking the time last night to talk to us. We discussed the inconsistency from game to game, the financial issues of the Dallas Stars, the issues with the young defensemen and spent a long time discussing the overall structure of this current team.

Personally, I walked away from the show with a bit of a new outlook on the team. The Stars are not the same team that they were five, even two years ago and we cannot expect them to be. They are 30 games into a new coaching and general manager regime and while it's ugly right now, Joe Nieuwendyk deserves some time to rebuild the Stars into what his vision for a successful hockey team would be. The Stars are young, and it's going to take some moves before things come together in the new direction he wants to go. We'd all like for the Stars to be successful in the here and now, but perhaps we all need to be a bit more patient.

Even Bob Gainey didn't build a champion in a month. Thanks Mike, for reminding us of that.

In case you missed it, you can find the archived show here at our Defending Big D LIVE homepage. You can also find all of our past episodes there as well.

Our show is also available on iTunes, and you find our download page here:

For those of you that download last night's show, there is an extra 15 minutes of conversation with Mike about the future of the Dallas Stars that was not aired during the live broadcast.