Mike Ribeiro shrugged his shoulders and suggested that coincidence may have played a part in what now looks like the turning point in the Dallas Stars' season.
A .500 team on the playoff bubble, the Stars were essentially where they were expected to be when they fired general manager Doug Armstrong on Nov. 13. Three months later, they are the NHL's hottest team, riding a seven-game winning streak since the All Star break and leading the Pacific Division with the second-best record in the entire league. Coincidence or not, the improved fortunes began when Dallas made the surprise decision to dump Armstrong and created a new co-GM position shared by Armstrong's assistant Les Jackson and Brett Hull.
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| Mike Ribeiro was locked up by co-GM Brett Hull for five years. (Getty Images) |
Ribeiro says that's not a big surprise.
"I really don't think we were playing that bad at the time," Ribeiro said. "We probably should have had a few more wins earlier in the season because we had a lot of leads that we let go in the third period. Usually you change coaches or players to have an impact on the team, so it's hard to say about a change at the top, but I think after the first 10, 15 games guys start to bear down more. Or maybe they got scared to be traded."
With the deadline two weeks away, that's still a possibility for the Stars, who have been looking to add a scoring forward since last summer. Their failure to do so was one of the reasons Armstrong ultimately lost his job, particularly since the Stars scored only seven goals in seven games against Vancouver in the first round of last year's playoffs, becoming only the second team in history to get three shutouts from its goalie and still lose a series.
But Hull, whose reputation as a player was as much about his colorful quotes as his scoring prowess, acknowledged recently that with so many teams still in a playoff race, finding the kind of top six forward the Stars need at the right price isn't easy.
"If something makes sense, we'll look at it," Hull said, demonstrating how quickly he has grasped the art of GM non-speak. "But we don't want to mortgage our future for someone who won't be here."
In other words, no rentals are likely for Dallas. Then again, the way the Stars have produced on offense this season, they may not really need one.
Dallas' ability to score when it needs to is one of the best kept secrets of its season so far. The Stars were tied for third in overall scoring and in the top 10 on the power play heading into Tuesday's games. In one of the telling categories about their ability to score, they are the NHL's only team that has won more games than it has lost after giving up the first goal.
And they're doing it without power-play quarterbacks Sergei Zubov and Philippe Boucher -- who have both missed large parts of the season with injuries -- and until recently, veteran forward Jere Lehtinen.
"Some of us have been surprised," center Mike Modano admitted. "There was a concern going into season about whether we were going to have enough scoring depth to compete with other high end teams and we've had a handful of key guys out for big chunks of the season. But we've had lot of guys step up."
Modano has been among them while taking on a more supporting and often defensive role in a season when he has become the all-time leading American-born scorer. So has Ribeiro, and linemates Niklas Hagman and captain Brenden Morrow, who are all in the midst of career offensive seasons.
Dallas has had good goaltending from Marty Turco and his understudy Mike Smith, and the Stars have been able to fill the injury gaps nicely with system products like defensemen Matt Niskanen and Niklas Grossman, who have eaten up ice time, and forwards Antti Miettinen and Jussi Jokinen, who have provided double-digit goal totals.
"A lot of these guys we've brought up have grown with the responsibilities," Modano said. "That's a bright spot to have some of your young guys play so well."
No doubt, but for a team that was commonly known for thinking defense and checking first, there is no brighter spot than having an offense that has turned out to be a lot better than anyone expected and has been allowed more freedom in recent months by coach Dave Tippett
"I think we've all gotten a chance to be more creative on the ice and to take chances knowing that we can make a mistake once in a while," Ribeiro said. "We have the players here who can score, and now we have the confidence in ourselves to be able to do it. That's an important thing."
Obviously.
