Marty Turco and Dallas Stars Hockey

Jennifer Floyd Engel from the Star Telegram sums it up perfectly in this article.

Lites’ excuses wearing thin as offense falters

Dear Jim Lites:

I want to start by apologizing. You wrote Stars fans and local media a letter back in July, and I have been remiss in not answering. Cowboys season has been front of mind, and y’all seemed so convinced that what you wrote was truth, not spin doctoring, that waiting seemed like a prudent course.

No longer.

Rumblings already have begun in the Stars locker room that what plagued this team last season has not been fixed. So I’ve highlighted some of your more cogent points about your fans and your team and responded as necessary:

There have been a lot of things written and said over the last two weeks, many of which have painted a negative perception of the Dallas Stars as a hockey club and where we are headed in the future. We’ve been called everything from ’stupid’ to ‘asleep at the wheel’ to ‘out of touch,’ simply because we did not make a big splash in the free agent market.

I’m here to tell you that these beliefs, columns, opinions and statements couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it’s downright unfair. Contrary to what some have written or said, we haven’t gone stupid overnight and we do have a plan in place.

What was written was y’all didn’t do anything.

This is a fact. You didn’t. You did not sign a scoring wing despite losing. People in your organization have tried spinning this as an unnecessary extravagance since a) Defense and goaltending is the calling card of this team, and; b) Good goaltending is why the Stars could not score in their first-round loss in Vancouver.

Of course, I had a fan ask me what happens if they face a team with a good goaltender again. And I’m not sure we have a good answer for that question.

The Dallas Stars have been the second-most successful team in the entire NHL over the last 11 years…. Do we wish we had more hardware? Absolutely, but the consistent success we’ve achieved over the years cannot be ignored.

The Cowboys have two more rings in the 1990s, and yet they are fixated on winning another championship. Try it. Or else Owner Jones might decide to join the billboard battle and poke a little fun at a certain team for thinking a championship absolves you from having to win another.

We were one of the best teams in the league again last season. The Stars won 50 games and earned 107 points, finishing just three points behind Pacific Division and Stanley Cup champ Anaheim (who we beat four times).

Wooo hooo. Why don’t you just start hanging regular-season banners or buy ‘we beat the defending champs’ rings. You did go on to say it is “understandable” that fans focus on the first-round playoff loss. How generous of you. Actually, what I think fans and us media types focus on is three first-round losses and the role lack of scoring played in them.

But in the new NHL, there are no longer “upsets” in the first round.

You are right. When a team loses in the first round three years in a row, it is not an upset. To quote Bill Parcells: You are what you are, and what you’ve been is Edmonton. Because in this “new NHL,” a team should be able to get out of the first round by accident at least once.

Some believe that we should make wholesale changes to this club because we have struggled in the playoffs of late. We disagree. It would be irresponsible of us to trade some of our core players because we believe that won’t make us better.

Nobody said trade core players. What was said was feel free to mix in a capable scoring wing with them. It would be nice if Mike Modano plays on a line with somebody good before he retires.

Would we like to add scoring? Yes. But we have to operate under the salary cap and do the best we can with the chips we have to play with at the table.

I’m glad you brought this up. The reason you are having trouble under the new system is because a capped system requires drafting well and developing those players. You have Brenden Morrow and…

What we can’t do is take unreasonable risks on contracts, which was something we could do under the old system.

What about signing a non-risky contract? Or about assembling a scouting department capable of discerning the difference?

These might sound like excuses to some but it is the reality of the business model we are in..

Not only do they sound like excuses, they are excuses.

Doug Armstrong has done an excellent job in firming up our roster. (It was here you noted the extensions for Brenden Morrow and Jere Lehtinen and trade for Mattias Norstrom). These moves basically spent a lot of the possible money that would have been available for this year’s crop of free agents.

Apparently, we need another Parcells-ism: Do not tell me about the labor, just show me the baby.

That said, we were very much interested in adding a player to bolster our scoring (and still are).

Still waiting, guys.

We held discussions with several key free agents on July 1. In the end, all of our targets ended up getting more money and/or more term than we were comfortable with.

Did it occur to anybody to offer more money?

Many of the contracts that were signed by free agents in the first 24 hours of free agency were for what we like to call “stupid money.”

So what you are saying is you guys are not as stupid as them. So explain again why those “stupid money” idiots in said markets win playoff games?

We refuse to mortgage our future simply to sign a free agent in July and appease the media. We’re not going to sign a player to win a PR battle; we’ll sign free agents to contracts that will help us win hockey games.

Let me get this straight: You will not mortgage the future of this team to win this year but you will determine whether to retain coach Dave Tippett on whether he does. How fair of y’all.

And I hope that part about winning hockey games meant playoffs.

There are still options available to add players to our roster. One possibility is making a trade to add that scorer.

Really? You promise? Like Ladislav Nagy? Excuse me while I yawn.

Look around our division and our conference and ask yourself has anyone gotten better? None of the playoff teams have.

Nobody is better; what a fabulous marketing campaign.

And our roster that you see today is probably not the final roster you will see on opening night. We will continue to look for a way to add scoring punch to this lineup.

Opening night is in the rearview mirror and, well, the lineup is exactly what it was when you penned this missive. Still waiting. And I think it is pretty obvious that more scoring is needed.

Every decision we make is done to win hockey games. We’ve always spent to the cap and always will, thanks to a great owner in Tom Hicks. Money is not an issue. The Dallas Stars are about winning. We’ve won in the past, we’re going to win this season, and we’re going to win in the future….

I’ll take that as a promise, and I’ll hold you to that promise. That, after all, is my job, not painting a positive perception of what basically has been a disappointing team in recent seasons.

Sincerely, Jennifer Floyd Engel