[MisterJoji]

Branching off of the Gulutzan's replacement thread, Tippett is rumoured to have a legitimate chance of being the next Flames head coach. The reaction to this has been mostly negative with people worrying about the implementation of boring, trap, defensive first system as he has rumoured to have in the past. But is this true?

Let's look at his first few years with the Dallas Stars. In 6 seasons in Dallas, the Stars made the playoffs for his first 5 years on the job. (3 trips to the first round, 1 trip to the second round and 1 trip to the Conference Finals) In those 5 seasons, Dallas never finished worse than 6th and had a President's Trophy season and one where Dallas was 2nd. Pretty nice pedigree, a hell of a lot more than Gulutzan has. Looking at his teams GA is sparklingly good. Never worse than 4th in the Conference with 2 seasons at the top of the GA category. But so what, he has the reputation as a D first coach. When you look at his teams GF, the results are actually not bad. Of the 5 seasons they made the playoffs, in 2 they were middle of the pack (9th) and in the other 3 seasons they were better than average (2nd, 4th & 5th). Thats respectable offence. In those years the Stars had some good offensive players. Modano, Guerin, Arnott, Zubov, Morrow, Jokinen, etc. He was able to get good offence out of good players.

Moving on to Phoenix. They made the playoffs his first 3 seasons there, including a trip to the Conference Finals in 2011/2012. The teams never place lower than 6th and had 2 playoff seasons with home ice advantage. This was again done on the back of sparkling D. GA ranked 1st, 5th and 5th those years, however those teams weren't exactly devoid of offence either, more middle of the pack (9th, 8th and 6th). Again, not the ultra-low scoring teams as rumoured. He was still able to get respectable offence from a much less talented roster compared to the Stars. When guys like Shane Doan, Matt Lombardi, Vrbata, Whitney, Yandle, etc. are able to produce an, at worst, average offence, he's doing something right. We have a >ppg winger, 30+ goal/60+ point centerman, 2 more 20+ goal scoring wingers and 2 (soon to be) 40+ point defensemen. I find it hard to believe that Tippett couldn't get at least Phoenix like average scoring out of this group, but more likely a top 5 team, given what he was able to get with a more talented Stars team. Not 12th in the Conference as the Flames currently sit.

I'm not deeply delving into his last few seasons in Phoenix for a few reasons, first of all, Scotty Bowman wouldn't have been able to get those teams to the playoffs and second, I'm tired. But I will say in his last 5 seasons coaching there, aside from a 15th and 13th place finishes in GF, the team was still at least average for 3 more seasons (7th, 8th and 8th).

That's 12/15 seasons coached where his teams were in the top half of the Conference in team total goals-for. Not exactly devoid of offence huh?. One last quote from Hall-of-famer Mike Modano re: Tippett. "Being around him for so long and hearing his philosophy of the game and how it's played, I can tell you he loves nothing more than a skilled player."

If you ask me, Tippett is still a vastly superior coach to Gulutzan and would have the team achieving way more success than it has under the current head coach.