Thoughts on Nieuwendyk

Stars owner Tom Hicks said at the end of the season that he would re-evaluate the use of the co-GM system. That opened the door for a possible change, but who would have thought that both Les Jackson and Brett Hull would be reassigned and that Joe Nieuwendyk would be brought in as GM. Not me.

I’ll have to be honest. This is a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time for an organization that is usually seen as a model of stability. This is the second GM change since November 2007. It makes me wonder.

I thought Doug Armstrong took too much blame for the team’s woes back in November 2007 when he got canned. I thought Jackson and Hull got too much credit for the way things turned around right after they took over for Armstrong. They are probably taking too much heat for the way things went this season, but the Sean Avery signing turned out to be a disaster and that didn’t help their cause. Avery didn’t work out here, pushed them over their budget and the Stars will be paying it for the next few years as far as a cap hit.

But when things go wrong, some one has to take the blame I guess. In November 2007 it was Armstrong. In December 2008 it was Avery. And in May/June 2009 it’s the guys who signed Avery.

But I think there has to be more than that.The co-GM thing just didn’t work out. I had a pretty good idea of what Jackson’s job was, but I never quite understood how Hull fit into the equation. Sometimes people are good at what they do and then get pushed into positions of higher responsibility and it doesn’t work out. I would have liked to have seen what Jackson could have done if he was just GM on his own, but it was Hicks who came up with the idea of co-general managers and it almost worked for one year or so. Now he’s decided to abandon it and move in a different direction, which brings us to Nieuwendyk. Is he it up to it?

Don’t know. There’s not much a track record to go on here. He was a great player, a winner and all that. But this isn’t just about that. There’s the hockey part, which he obviously knows, and there’s the management part, which is an entirely different skill set. He’s obviously been learning the management ropes in Toronto and Florida, and worked with Team Canada as well. All of that is valuable experience and he’s gotten some good reviews around the league. But until the guy is in charge and making the calls, you don’t know.

Obviously, there was a public relations element to putting in Hull as co-GM back in 2007 and I think there is a public relations element in bringing Nieuwendyk in as GM now. Hiring a big name like Nieuwendyk, especially a fan favorite the 1999 Cup team, will generate interest and excitement within the fan base and even create some interest in the casual fans.

But this isn’t 1999. It’s 2009 and it’s a different league and Nieuwendyk is in a much different role. There are some big challenges ahead for the franchise because of the financial woes surrounding Hicks and there is an economy that is expected to mean a shrinking salary cap. And, he’s going to have to start off negotiating with players he played with in 1999, like unrestricted free agents Sergei Zubov and Jere Lehtinen.  That’s the enivornment in which Nieuwendyk will have to shape the Stars. And shaping the Stars goes beyond just what we see on the ice at the American Airlines Center.

Time will tell here and I am looking forward to see how he does. 

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.