Less than a month after hiring head coach Willie Desjardins, the Texas Stars announced that they hired assistant coach Doug Lidster. Press release from the Texas Stars Website below:

Cedar Park, TX – Texas Stars General Manager Scott White announced Friday that the club has hired Doug Lidster as assistant coach of Dallas’ primary affiliate in the American Hockey League (AHL).

Lidster, 51 (born Oct. 18, 1960), was the hockey director for the Victory Honda AAA youth program in suburban Detroit the last five years. He also served a stint as the assistant coach for Canada’s women’s national hockey team in 2009-10, where he helped guide the team to the Four Nations Cup Championship, as well as an Olympic Gold Medal and an MLP Cup Championship. Prior to his time with Victory Honda and Team Canada, he was the head coach of the Saginaw Spirit in the Ontario Hockey League.

Lidster was an assistant coach with Medicine Hat of the Western Hockey League in 2002-03, the first season during which new Texas Stars head coach Willie Desjardins was the Tigers’ bench boss. With Medicine Hat, he helped guide the team to the second round of the WHL Playoffs.

“We are pleased to add Doug Lidster to our coaching staff,” said White. “He and Willie Desjardins have a history of working well together, and he clearly has fantastic experience as a player and as a coach. We feel he’ll be an outstanding asset to the club and we welcome him to the Texas Stars family.”

The native of Kamloops, British Columbia, played in the NHL from 1984-1999 with the Vancouver Canucks, New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Dallas Stars. In 897 career games, he recorded 343 points (68 goals, 268 assists) and 679 penalty minutes. He played in a total of 80 Stanley Cup playoff games, including four with the Stars in the club’s Stanley Cup championship run.

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Lidster is no stranger to the way that Desjardins operates, having worked with him with the Medicine Hat Tigers. It seems as that the Stars organization is aligning their coaching staff to work under the same system, seeing as though Desjardins worked with Gulutzan, and now Lidster has worked with Desjardins. This is good news as we hope to see many of those who skated the Cedar Park Center make their debut with the Dallas Stars.

Although both Dallas and the Texas Stars did not make the post-season this year, there is still a lot of news and announcements coming out of both camps. As previously reported, the Texas Stars let go of their coaches Jeff Pyle and Jeff Truitt after a disappointing performance this year. The word around the Stars organization was that the replacement would be someone who was familiar with Glen Gulutzan‘s system. These rumors turned about to be correct when it was announced today that the new head coach of the Texas Stars would be Willie Desjardins (Duh-ZHAR-dihns).

With 27 years of coaching experience, Desjardins was my first choice for head coach. He has many years under his belt coaching young players, as his most successful years were with the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers. Although we have not been apprised of the other official coaching candidates, my guess was that Paul Jerrard would not have wanted to leave the cush position he has with the Dallas Stars.

Desjardins will be introduced to the media at the Cedar Park Center Thursday June 14th at 11am. Texas GM Scott White and Dallas Stars head coach Glen Gulutzan will be in attendance as well. Dallas GM Joe Nieuwendyk had this to say about Coach Willie, “We believe that Willie’s track record as a teacher of the game and his ability to develop young players is a perfect fit for the Texas Stars. His knowledge of Glen Gulutzan’s system and his familiarity with our prospects will continue to improve player development between Dallas and the Texas Stars.” (Source: www.texasstarshockey.com)

From a Texas Stars fan perspective, I cannot wait for the season to start and believe that Desjardins is the perfect candidate to usher in a new era of young, talented players.