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Dallas Stars Daily Links: Montgomery’s Plan

The Stars’ new head coach opens up about his strategy for his first NHL season. Plus, the Stars’ involvement in grassroots hockey, the Maple Leafs make a groundbreaking hire, and more.

Training camp hasn’t even started yet, but rookie head coach Jim Montgomery is already turning heads when it comes to planning for the upcoming Dallas Stars season.

First off, Montgomery is setting himself apart from his predecessor, Ken Hitchcock, in how he runs his coaching staff, favoring an “everyone gets their say” approach rather than “my way or the highway:”

Hitchcock’s way of dealing with players was similar to his staff, and that’s how he always was throughout his NHL career. If their thoughts aligned they worked well together. If they didn’t the assistant coach typically ended caving and lining up to Hitch’s line of thinking sooner or later.

It could be his status as a rookie head coach, it could just be his personality and the way he plans to operate. Either way, Montgomery has built a staff that will thrive on exchanging ideas.

Montgomery has also focused in on analytics and information as a key part of his coaching method, as well as focusing on how the Stars need to thrive as a puck possession team:

“I want to have more clean entries and I want teams, it’s something we’re going to track, is how are we doing, especially within a game, clean entries compared to the other team’s clean entries... I don’t care if we block a lot of shots. I hope we have the puck so the other team has to block them.”

You can read more in Sean Shapiro’s piece here.

Stars Stories

The Hockey News has made their season predictions. Do you agree with their outlook for the Stars?

Next in Mike Heika’s Summer School series is captain Jamie Benn, who is more fired up than ever. [NHL]

Honestly, who doesn’t want to see more of John Klingberg?

Sean Shapiro talks about potential breakout candidates, whether the Stars could still trade for Erik Karlsson, and more in the return of his mailbag: [The Athletic]

Around the League

Speaking of Karlsson, I have some more juicy rumors for you all:

Jared Clinton takes a look at a dozen NHL players who have their eyes set on new career milestones this season: [The Hockey News]

I’m not sure this counts as tampering, but I’m going to complain anyways just because having Artemi Panarin would make the Tampa Bay Lightning unstoppable:

Is ex-Star Jamie Oleksiak a breakout candidate this season? One could argue the defenseman already had a breakthrough with the Pittsburgh Penguins: [NBC Sports]

The Toronto Maple Leafs made headlines yesterday by making a rather nontraditional hire:

Finally...

Many people would argue Texas could never become a “hockey state,” but that’s not going to stop the Dallas Stars from fostering the game locally:

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