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Dallas Stars Daily Links: Jim Nill on the Stars’ Struggles

Jim Nill talks about where Dallas is at and where they go from here. Plus, navigating the Stars’ super condensed schedule, the effectiveness of mid-season coaching changes, and more.

The Dallas Stars have been struggling a lot lately — that’s no secret. So what does the man in charge of the roster, general manager Jim Nill, think about everything?

In a recent interview with Saad Yousuf, Nill talked about the various ailments plaguing the Stars, including their seemingly inability to score:

“It’s a lot of different factors but in the end, it’s player performance. I get back to, if you play the right way, we’re going to score goals and we’re going to prevent goals... I think we can be a little harder in the offensive zone, I think we can go more to the net and be a little bit harder in front of the net. I know that’s been spoken about to the players and they know that. We just have to play better, overall.”

Perhaps the most difficult part about this slump is that it will be hard to catch back up. The team only has 40 games remaining, not to mention that they’ll all be played in just 70 days. That makes load management more important of an issue than ever:

“You kind of have to live game by game. We’re trying to get a win (on Tuesday). The coach’s job is to put the lineup out there that he thinks is going to have the best chance to win under the circumstances and we’re going to do that game by game. We also talked to our training staffs and know we’re going to have to manage practices. (Monday) may have been our last practice of the year, to tell you the truth... As far as a full-blown practice, this may have been our last one. “

You can read more of the interview here.

Stars Stories

Speaking of the schedule, even eliminating practices might not be enough rest for the players as things currently stand:

Denis Gurianov, like the rest of the Stars right now, is having a hard time scoring lately:

Fingers crossed that things start getting better soon, starting with tonight’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning:

Around the League

The Montreal Canadiens made an in-season coaching change to try and salvage their own struggles, but results may vary:

While many leagues are starting back up again, the OHL has still not resumed play:

Theo Fleury understands the struggles people face with mental health problems, and he’s here to help:

For many (obvious) reasons, the NHL Trade Deadline will probably be (even more of a) dud this year:

Finally...

Hmm, maybe reinforcements for the Stars’ season are coming sooner than we might think? ;)

(In all seriousness, congratulations to Mavrik Bourque!)

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