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Dallas Stars Daily Links: Montgomery Reflects on Regular Season

The Stars’ bench boss learned a lot in his first year as an NHL head coach. Plus, Dallas will take on the Nashville Predators in the first round, head coaching changes around the NHL, and more.

The Dallas Stars have finished the regular season with a playoff berth, their first since the 2015-16 season. That’s quite the accomplishment for Jim Montgomery, who is wrapping up his first season behind an NHL bench. And spoiler alert: being an NHL head coach has a steep learning curve.

“Yeah, I learned a lot. I learned I don’t know that much, I have a lot to learn,” Montgomery said. “But you know what? We’re doing it together. We’re growing together and that’s been the fun part, and I think people see it. It wasn’t very pretty for a long time. But I think you see a team that plays to their identity and a team that believes in it.”

Perhaps the biggest takeaway Montgomery took from the year is that you can’t always mold the players to your system. Sometimes, you just have to adapt to the players:

“It’s not sexy to win with defense and to be a defense-approach team, it’s not,” Montgomery said. “But if our goal is to be successful and make the playoffs and have success in the playoffs, this is how we have to play. And everybody knows that.”

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“I’m never going to go away from my belief that you have to pressure and possess the puck,” Montgomery said. “But some players just don’t hang on to pucks long enough, they don’t protect pucks well enough for us to do certain things. That’s why we did more one-on-one video.”

You can read more from Sean Shapiro here.

More Stars News

For once, a regular season finale against the Minnesota Wild didn’t end in heartbreak. Instead, it ended a successful regular season with a bang:

The Stars will take on the Nashville Predators this postseason, with many players (and coaches) making their playoff debut:

Let’s all do our part to make sure the first round has sellout crowds, alright?

Around the League

While half of the league is gearing up for the playoffs, the rest have gotten a head start on the offseason. That inevitably means head coaching changes:

By the time you read this, the Florida Panthers might have already hired three-time Stanley Cup champion Joel Quenneville to be their new head coach.

Another thing for the playoff-less teams to look forward to is the NHL Draft Lottery. Unless you’re the Ottawa Senators, of course...

Finally, Nikita Kucherov capped off his Art Ross campaign with 128 points, an NHL record for most by a Russian-born player. Here’s a nice piece on hockey’s best player this year:

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