Dallas Fires Armstrong

The Dallas Stars fired long time GM Doug Armstrong and promoted Brett Hull and Les Jackson as interim co-managers. Jeff Cogan also replaces Jim Lites as president of the Stars.

The timing of the move was a bit surprising as it is about a quarter of the way through the year, as most time GM’s are let go at the end of a season. Despite being a .500 team, the future wasn’t looking very bright as the Stars maintained an aging core with little youth to fill the ranks.

Most of Dallas’ cap space is tied up in Mike Modano, Jere Lehtinen, Brendan Morrow, Mattias Norstrom, Boucher and Sergei Zhubov, only who of Morrow is under age 34 and all but Norstrom tied up through next year and beyond. Marty Turco is making nearly six million, but is in the prime of his career, as is Morrow. This leaves little space to bring in free agents, in particular young ones who have many years left as Dallas currently sits only a few million from the cap ceiling.

Armstrong also spent $8mm over four years to bring in Jeff Halpern, who is little more than a third liner who can add some scoring, and is spending $2.8mm on Mike Ribiero, a one dimensional and streaky player. While I won’t say Armstrong’s money is ill spent, I think Morrow, Zubov, Lehtinen and Boucher are worth their pay, he has made some questionable moves.

All in all though the move wasn’t that surprising, just really the timing. Many are speculating that this is Bret Hull’s ticket into the GM position, and some are saying he can’t be any good. Well, Snow is doing a pretty good job and he didn’t have any front office experience, so I wouldn’t count out Hull should he eventually get the job.

-Jordan