Hitchcock was with St. Louis and they made it pretty clear he was fired. The retirement talk was before the team's big skid and going into the season, since he only had a one year contract and everyone already knew Yeo was taking over next year. If things hadn't ended the way they did, he probably would have ended up in the Blues front office. As it is, though, he's one win short of being the third winningest coach in history and I could see him not wanting to end his career on a sour note, so I'm not really shocked that he signed with Dallas. Especially since it's where he won the cup.