Rick Bowness does not appear confident when asked if he has lost the room.

There comes a point in every coaches tenure at the upper echelons of professional sports where it simply becomes time to move on. Even the best coaches in the world eventually reach a point where their message no longer resonates with their players, and the National Hockey League provided us a fantastic example of that just this week when head coach Paul Maurice willingly stepped down from his position behind the bench of the Winnipeg Jets because he felt it was time for a new voice in the locker room

In the case of Paul Maurice the move was made voluntarily, but most coaches usually aren't so lucky and are shown the door when things aren't going as well as management or ownership had expected them to be. There's no question that the Dallas Stars, currently sitting near the bottom of the NHL's Central Division with only the Chicago Blackhawks and the Arizona Coyotes behind them, have failed to meet those expectations thus far into the season and unsurprisingly questions about the tenure of head coach Rick Bowness are now starting to come up.

Prior to Saturday's game, a 5 - 4 win over the aforementioned Chicago Blackhawks, Bowness addressed members of the media and it was there that he was hit with some relatively tough questions. Bowness was asked before the game if he felt his message and his voice were still resonating among the players in the Stars locker room, and the answer he gave did not exactly inspire confidence.

"Yeah," said Bowness in response. "We're competing, we're playing."

It wasn't so much what Bowness said however, it was his body language that many seemed to take issue with, specifically that shrug he gave before putting forth his answer. 

Generally I don't like to read too much into things like this, but the reaction to Bowness' body language seemed to be universal among the Stars fans who saw it. Here are just a few examples of how this was received by fans in Dallas:

One fan drew a comparisson to the aforementioned Paul Maurice, and not a flattering one.

Many others viewed the body language as the real response.

And of course there were the lame duck comments as well.

The Stars did manage to pick the win up last night and are 5 - 5 over their last 10 games but it seems there is a growing sense, even among those who cover the team professionally, that Bowness is running out of time.