What happened to the Dallas Stars in 2008-2009?

M88K

irreverent
May 24, 2014
9,072
7,022
Did their core get too old or did they just perform badly? Did they decide to rebuild? What took them so long to get back to the playoffs in 2014?
Injuries were a big factor in 08-09.
Then bankruptcy was a big factor in the retention of and addition of talent. Mixed with horrible drafting from prior years and poor coaching (Crawford) and you have a recipe for horrible records.

Hell the team has only been able to make the PO under the Nill Era because they've been able to buy talent or gotten lucky with other teams having extreme misfortune, while all the other issues still are present. And even with buying talent to make up for the shortcomings elsewhere they still miss the playoffs pretty regularly and even with stellar goaltending are not much more than a wildcard contender
 
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serp

Registered User
Jan 17, 2016
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Sean Avery and injuries after that Hicks went bankrupt and which lead to all of his sports teams getting blown up.
 

Troy McClure

Suter will never be scratched
Mar 12, 2002
47,604
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South of Heaven
Did their core get too old or did they just perform badly? Did they decide to rebuild? What took them so long to get back to the playoffs in 2014?
Three big things:

1) Zubov being unable to play. Zubov was the straw that stirred the drink for the Stars from the late 90s through the late 2000s. He drove so much of the play that his absence was devastating. He wasn't ever able to get healthy that season.

2) Sean Avery was hated by Modano, Morrow, and Turco. Those "leaders" of the team pouted and flat out quit trying because of how much they hated Avery. Their terrible play early on set a bad example and put the team in a massive hole. Even after Avery was booted from the team to appease the country club leadership group, it was too late. They went on a nice win streak to start flirting with .500 midway through the season, but it wasn't sustainable because of #3.

3) There were injuries to Zubov, Morrow, Lehtinen, and Richards that cost them many games. All four of those guys were expected to carry big loads
 

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