Mac Engel: Stars bringing back a familiar name as head coach is a no-win situation

Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Jun 29, 2025

Published in Hockey

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FORT WORTH, Texas — One of the first things Jim Nill did in his tenure as the general manager of the Dallas Stars was to fire head coach Glen Gulutzan.

That was in May of 2013, when Nill was two weeks into the job. On his way out the door, Gulutzan must have said something right in his exit interview.

Multiple NHL sources said that Nill is set to bring Gulutzan back for a second run as the head coach of the Dallas Stars, which these days is a slow moving conveyor belt to the unemployment line.

Nill will soon announce this team’s eighth new head coach since the start of the 2009 season. None of these guys has lasted longer than three years. George Steinbrenner would have been proud.

Nill has been looking for a head coach since he announced that Pete DeBoer will not return after the team was eliminated from the Western Conference finals for the third straight year.

That’s the standard for Gulutzan: Reach the West finals, and win the next round, too.

Nill didn’t hire the standard retread coach, as NHL often does. This isn’t a Lindy Ruff or a Marc Crawford hire; both veteran NHL coaches did their time with the Stars this century. Crawford lasted two years, and Ruff three.

Gulutzan is really close to the retread head coach. He’s been to the playoffs once in four years as an NHL head coach with two teams, and never won a game.

This isn’t a bad hire. There is also nothing big, sexy or bold about it. It’s just a hire. And Gulutzan walks into a situation where even if he wins, it may not be enough.

The playoffs aren’t cutting it. He must win the Stanley Cup.

He was the head coach under GM Joe Nieuwendyk for the Stars from 2011 to ‘13. At the time he was hired, Gulutzan was a highly respected coaching prospect in the Stars organization, and it made sense for Nieuwendyk to give him a chance.

The team was still rebuilding, and Gulutzan didn’t have the players. He had an aging Brenden Morrow, and a young rising prospect in Jamie Benn. The blue line wasn’t nearly good enough. The same for the goalie, Kari Lehtonen.

The Stars finished 42-35-5 in Gulutzan’s first season, and missed the playoffs. In the second year, the NHL’s season was reduced to 48 games because of a lockout. Those seasons are a mess, and the Stars missed the playoffs again.

He wasn’t here long enough to encounter the traditional problems that hound coaches of rebuilding teams. The roster wasn’t where it needed to be to compete for any coach.

After the season, Stars owner Tom Gaglardi, who bought the team in November of ‘11, wanted to overhaul everything. Nieuwendyk was out, and Gaglardi empowered Nill to do as needed.

The state of the team was not Gulutzan’s fault, but the new GM wanted his guy.

Gulutzan moved on, and eventually was the head coach of the Calgary Flames, from 2016 to ‘18. In his two-year tenure, the team made the playoffs once and was swept in the opening round.

The Flames have been a mostly an irrelevant NHL franchise for the last 15 years, and haven’t had the players.

After leaving Calgary, Gulutzan served as an assistant for the Edmonton Oilers since 2018-’19. At the very least the Stars can ask Gulutzan the specifics of how the Oilers kicked their butt in each of the last two Western Conference finals.

Gulutzan is coming back to an organization that has changed since he left in 2013.

Gaglardi has a firm grip of this team, and he’s not afraid to spend money. Nill, who was just named the NHL’s executive of the year for the third straight year, has the trust of not just everyone in the organization, including the players, but the entire league.

Unlike Gulutzan’s first run with the Stars, or his time with the Flames, he will inherit a much better roster that is expected to, and can, compete. With Miro Heiskanen, Wyatt Johnston, Jason Robertson, Thomas Harley, Mikko Rantanen and goalie Jake Oettinger, this will be the best team Gulutzan has coached.

As the playoffs have shown in each of the last three years, however, this is a team that has proven that as good as it is, it’s not a Stanley Cup champion.

A head coach can’t be expected to make the difference between the Western Conference finals and Stanley Cup Finals, but that’s the assignment for Glen Gulutzan.

He was fired for much less.

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