Where do the Stars go from here after Jim Montgomery’s surprise firing?

The hockey world was rocked by Jim Montgomery’s firing on Tuesday, but the Dallas Stars are the ones who will have to pick up the pieces on their season.

The mystery surrounding the firing of Dallas Stars head coach Jim Montgomery has yet to be revealed. On Tuesday morning, the Stars dropped the news that Montgomery had been removed as head coach of the team, effective immediately, for “unprofessional conduct” but gave no specific reason for the move.

Stars’ general manager Jim Nill told reporters in Dallas that Montgomery was not fired for a coaching abuse issue, which caused Calgary Flames coach Bill Peters to resign last month, nor was it a criminal matter. With how open-ended a reason the Stars gave for Montgomery’s firing, it’s no wonder the hockey world went into deep speculation mode and has yet to resurface.

The last news to be heard on the matter was that Gary Bettman called the reason behind Montgomery’s firing a “personal issue” but much like Nill, he did not elaborate on the issue.

As such, the Stars have Rick Bowness at the helm as the team’s interim head coach for the remainder of the season and a team twisting in the wind with the unexpected announcement. Had Montgomery’s firing happened in October, the entire hockey world would have seen it coming. Instead, the news has left the hockey world scrambling for answers, and wondering just what will become of the Stars now.

At the beginning of the 2019-20 NHL season, the Stars had just one win in their first nine games of the season and were facing intense scrutiny over the first few weeks. Though Montgomery was not officially on the hot seat, had the Stars’ woes continued, he likely would have been dismissed in the way Mike Babcock and John Hynes had been earlier this season.

Instead, Montgomery was fired with no warning and the Stars are now left to pick up the pieces from this bombshell. Since the team’s 1-7-1 start to the season, Dallas has picked up the pace tremendously and have put together quite the comeback. As of Tuesday, the Stars’ record sits at 17-11-3 on the season as Dallas holds the Western Conference’s first wild card spot with 37 points.

In 31 games this year, the Stars have the NHL’s third-best goals allowed (76) as Ben Bishop and Anton Khudobin have settled into their roles. Offensively, the Stars have still underwhelmed this season, but they’ve managed to pull back into playoff contention by the strength of their goaltending and team defense.

As of late, the Stars have been on a bit of a roll, as the team has gone 6-3-1 in their last 10 games — though a losing streak of four games sits in the middle of that stretch. The team has done well to climb out of their disastrous start to the season, but their place in the Western Conference is precarious at best.

Bowness was hired as the Stars’ assistant coach in 2018, but has previous head coaching experience in the NHL stretching back decades. The last time Bowness took the helm as a head coach was for the 2003-04 Phoenix Coyotes and his overall record as a head coach sits at 123-289-48-3. Though those numbers are not inspiring, the last time Bowness coached was when the league still didn’t have a salary cap and the sport of hockey has undergone incredible changes since then.

Where does leave the Stars, then? Without Montgomery — who coached the Stars to a 43-32-7 record in his first season with the team — Dallas may find themselves falling backwards out of a playoff spot. The team has just one player, Roope Hintz, who has hit the double digit mark in goals a third of the way into the season. Big names in Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Joe Pavelski have underperformed to a man this year while the supporting cast has largely been absent.

Dallas does have a positive goal differential of plus-six, but for how long will their goaltending prop them up? The Stars are performing extremely well at home — with an 11-4-1 record so far this season — but have a pedestrian 6-7-2 record away from the American Airlines Center. Good hockey teams find ways to win games on the road, and the Stars have yet to prove they can this season.

These next few weeks will be big ones for this team. With a new — but familiar — head coach behind the bench, Dallas may take some time to shake off the shock of Montgomery’s firing. And yet, the team could thrive in this environment and find ways to rally around themselves in this tumultuous time.

The Stars were already a fascinating team on the rise this season with how up and down their first two months of the season were, but the Montgomery news means all eyes will be on Dallas to see how they perform after such an abrupt and expected end to their head coach.