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Friday Foofaraw: Our Definitely World Famous Blackhawks Convention Primer

By Sam Fels 2348 0

It’s that time again! The last happening on the hockey calendar before we head into the summer doldrums and awake for training camp. It’s in the no way at all kitchy, greedy, utterly creepy Blackhawks Convention! We don’t want you going in there blind, so let us provide a guide for all the goings-on this weekend:

Friday

5pm Opening Ceremonies

Every year I hope this is the one where Eddie Olczyk’s hair just gets up, lights a cigarette, and walks off for good. Maybe this is the one. Anyway, watch Eddie try and be overly dramatic for every introduction while they players sweat their balls off behind the curtain being forced to wear the jerseys on a summer day in an overstuffed ballroom. All for the privilege to come out and wade through the teeming masses that they assuredly don’t want to touch but have to (a curious role reversal for Garbage Dick). You have to love that this is called “Opening Ceremonies” for not a sporting event but one meant to drive cash while a bunch of people stand around.

8pm – The Second City

Oh good, time for my yearly rant on why Second City (and IO) are trash outfits. No matter how talentless you are, Second City will run you up the ladder of classes and shows as long as you keep paying. For every Tina Fey or Steve Carrell they produce, there’s a 100 people less funny than the dude in the break room at work you’ve fantasized about taking a scythe too. And a good portion of them will be at this natural disaster, trying to prod stiff and bewildered hockey players through an improv sketch. Oh, and are you surprised Adam Burish is part of this? If Burish couldn’t skate he definitely would have been an IO regular 15 years ago.

Saturday

9am – The Breakaway

Oh man,  if you thought you had enough of Rocky and McD blowing themselves, just you wait, fucko! There’s a goddamn book! They’ll be pushing this “Inside Story of The Wirtz Family Business and The Chicago Blackhawks,” as if there was anymore to it than being born on third, manipulating local laws and taxes to shelter your liquor and real estate business, and falling ass-backwards into a ready-made Cup contender because your father just happened to kick it at that moment. Cunning strategy, really.

10am – Hockey Operations

We might not get the Bowman, MacIsaac, MacIver, and Bernard fatal four-way when we finally find out who was responsible for the Trevor Daley idea, but it wouldn’t matter because McD is going to wander in halfway through this and declare himself the winner and take all the questions.

10:45 – Goal Scorers

Oh sweet lord. A vapid, Trump-supporting, Kid Rock-loving loudmouth in Jeremy Roenick and Patrick Kane together. This is sure to attract the highest quality person.

11:45 – President’s Forum

Oh you thought “The Breakaway” would be all the self-fellating from the top? Guess again, shitbag! McDonough gets one forum all to himself, hopefully taking time out from bullying his employees but no guarantees, to tell you what a great job he’s done in the past 11 years. If anyone asks a tough question, please ignore him shitting himself. He’s a genius, don’t you know?

12:30 – Blackhawks Family Feud

This is hell.

1:15 – Kids Only

A search for the next Joey The Junior Reporter, because Joey has now discovered drugs, poetry, and girls with purple hair. He’s burned all of his Hawks memorabilia.

2:00 – Blackhawks Match Game

Believe me, the Hawks players have been playing “match game” in their heads since this thing fucking started.

2:45 – Blueliners

Chris Chelios and Duncan Keith are there to tell you what it’s like to slash a player in the face. Chelios wins because he got Paul Kariya whereas Keith wasted his moment of madness merely on Charlie Coyle.

3:45 – From Beer League To Big League

“Hey! Remember when the Hawks had a lost season because their front office forgot to assemble a blue line or get a better center than Anisimov or their coach didn’t want to play any of their young players and they had no plan if Crawford got hurt and their television ratings went into the toilet and the building wasn’t full anymore?

“Oh you do? Hmm…crap.”

“But Scott Foster! Wasn’t that fun?”

5pm – Blackhawks TV Originals

I can’t tell you what this about nor do I care to find out because anyone associated with Blackhawks TV has all the panache of a cumquat.

6pm – Blackhawks Game Show

Jesus god there’s three of these things! More Second City! If you’re a tourist from Iowa/head trauma victim you’ll be highly entertained!

Sunday

9am – The Hull Brothers

Do I have to say it anymore? It’s 9am so there’s a small chance Bobby won’t be drunk yet, but he’ll still be an irredeemable asshole. Maybe he’ll choke on his fucking wig already.

10am – Meet Your New Blackhawks!

No!

11am – Life After Hockey

Burish, Bickell, Eager, and Fraser for this one. The latter three look on impatiently while Burish finds any camera left in the hotel to get in front of.

 

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The Comfort Or Punishment Of Anonymity

By Sam Fels 2197 0

As the Hawks’ prospects continue to toil in the West Side heat, and I assume beg adults to buy them beer back at the hotel at night, I am left to wonder what could happen with the Hawks both on and off the ice when the season starts. And I wonder what the effect of having it happen totally in the dark in the Chicago sports scene will be.

One of the things that broke the Hawks’ way, and something that had nothing to do with John McDonough and Rocky Wirtz, is that their rise from hockey purgatory to the aristocracy was perfectly timed with the collapse of the rest of the Chicago sports scene. The ’08-’09 season started just days after both the White Sox and Cubs ate it in the Division Series (the Cubs much more spectacularly than the Sox), and neither would even come close to a playoff spot for another seven seasons. Well, actually, the Sox came within three games in 2012 but you didn’t know that because no one went and no one cared. TELL ME I’M WRONG FIFTH FEATHER.

To go along with that, the city’s juggernaut, the Bears, have only made one playoff appearance in this Hawks’ era. Sure, the end of the ’08-’09 season saw the Bears trade for Jay Cutler, and at the time that was a far bigger story than the Hawks ever produced (which might be why he dropped the puck at Game 1 that year). But the Lovie doldrums persisted, and we know what happened after that. The Bulls spasmed one conference final run, where it was promptly snuffed out as soon as LeBron started guarding Derrick Rose. The Cubs run started just at the end of the last Hawks’ championship. Quite simply, for more years than you can believe now, the Hawks had the stage to themselves. They were the only story in a city that had been starved for championships…because the Sox one doesn’t count, obviously. Nor did it ever happen.

That won’t be the case this year. The Bears, whatever they’re going to be, are going to be awfully interesting and awfully watched. The Cubs likely have a fourth-straight October to navigate. Even the Bulls, who will still suck most likely, have done SOMETHING this summer, even if signing Zach Lavine is a touch weird for that money and Jabari Parker might have one knee. It’s something they can push when the season opens. There are new toys to at least carry some novelty.

So even if the Hawks were to start say, 3-7-1, the front pages of the various sports sections and sites around town aren’t going to be adorned with a picture of Quenneville looking bemused with a headline like, “There Is No Joy In Quenneville.’ (Like they’d ever come up with something that creative!) Columnists around town, even if the collection of them would struggle to define what offsides in hockey is, are not going be penning a host of works calling for massive changes. They’ll be focusing on one out pattern MITCH BETTAH HAVE MY MONEY threw against the Lions. The external pressure, other than from impatient fans in the building–and even that’s questionable given how many sell their tickets early in the season–and the yappy construction workers that act as McD’s focus group, is just not going to be there.

Which leads me to wonder if that’s a comfort or an annoyance for the Hawks. No question they loved the spotlight. But given the iffy decisions of late and some of the facade of what they are falling down around them, do they enjoy the darkness? The lack of scrutiny? Would they want real questions being asked?

Or would the lack of attention really bother them? Would they do something–firing Q or a big trade or something of that ilk–to try and get the lights back on however much they could? Would they abandon whatever plan they have if they felt they had fallen too far back in the consciousness?

One way or another, we’re going to find out what kind of hockey town they’ve actually created here, and how they feel about it when we do.

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The More You Think About It, The More Joel Quenneville Is Doomed

By Sam Fels 3026 0

I know the folly of taking the Hawks at their word. Their pronouncements from on-high have gotten weirder and less sensical as the team’s fortunes have slipped, and even more so now that less and less people are paying any attention. This is an organization that still considers itself the cream of the NHL, and yet when it came time for the most coveted free agent in recent history to hit the market the Hawks weren’t anywhere close. To be fair, John Tavares wasn’t ever going to sign with the Hawks over the Leafs, if only on emotional reasons, but for the Hawks to not even to be in the room says a lot. And whether they’ll tell you this or not, they missed out on other targets too, though as we know the rest of those targets sucked and maybe the Hawks are lucky they didn’t have the cap space or the attraction. Ian Cole was not going to make you run to the closet and sweat through the beloved sweater in July in pride, to be sure.

Still, if we take the Hawks at anything resembling face value on what they say, which is that they will ring the changes if the Hawks don’t bounce back from last season’s what-have-ya, then it’s hard to see how Quenneville is going to survive the season. Again, that’s if you take them at face value, and I’m not here to tell you that you should.

While McDonough and Rocky have hit all the notes about last season being unacceptable, along with Stan Bowman, and McDonough has pulled his noted and solo trick of bullying his employees to let everyone know just how very red and angry he is, Stan Bowman has continued along a path of a “rebuild on the fly.” All of his quotes about what the Hawks are doing at least reference keeping powder dry for next contracts to Schmaltz and DeBrincat, and what he hopes for Sikura and Ejdsell and whoever else. He continues to push Forsling as a solution on the blue line, and as you saw at the draft they took the biggest project–though most talented player– available at that spot. The Hawks have steadfastly refused to discuss Saad or Schmaltz in a trade, keeping an eye on two or three years down the road when those players have to do the heavy lifting. Either they can’t and the Hawks will suck or they become something more and the Hawks will…only kind of suck.

Everything that’s been done has been with an eye on the future. You wouldn’t do that unless you had assurances from the higher-ups that you’ll be able to see the plan through, whatever that plan might be. If a GM was trying to sit on two chairs at once, building a team to at least be competitive if everything broke right at the moment while maintaining players and hope for the future, any team that fired said GM and brought in someone else to either tear it all up or carry out the same vision with a different set of eyes would be a team that didn’t actually have a plan or organization. That very well could be the Hawks, but they at least want you to think it’s not them.

Let’s put it this way, a GM truly on the hot seat and having his job dependent on what happens this year, and maybe even just the first half of this year, would probably act with just a touch more urgency than Cam Ward, Chris Kunitz, and Brandon Manning. Just a hunch.

So where does that leave Quenneville? We know the easiest lever to pull for any organization when things go pear-shaped is to fire the coach. Rarely does it have a huge effect, though there are examples of that, but it shows you’re doing SOMETHING. Even with a coach who draws as much water as Q. Sometimes it’s just rearranging the chairs, but sometimes it provides a lift to the players who can at least hear something different when they arrive at work.

And really, what’s Q going to do here? You forget that even before Corey Crawford went down last year, the Hawks were clinging to the last playoff spot or even the chase for that like it was a tiny crimp. They were barely .500. On Dec. 22nd, they were 17-12-5, tied with Calgary for the last playoff spot and fifth in the division. A juggernaut this was not. So if we get to Christmas again, even with a healthy Corey Crawford and one who can put up THOSE numbers after missing half of a season, and that’s where the Hawks are again is that enough? Barely scraping for the last playoff spot? You wouldn’t think so. And they could be worse than that. I can sit here and say right now there are three teams in the Central assuredly better than they are right now, and Colorado, Minnesota, and Dallas could very well be and the first two finished miles ahead of them last year. Even if the Hawks were running 4th in the Central at Christmas next season but entrenched in a wild card spot, is that enough? Is “wild card” synonymous with “One Goal?” It’s an improvement, barely, but it’s not a resurgence.

I mean… I guess the team ahead of Crawford is a little better than last year’s? It is if Schmaltz and DeBrincat take a step forward (and are deployed correctly). It is if Dylan Sikura is something more than just getting to play with Adam Gaudette in college, and/or EggShell’s AHL playoff performance portends to something more. It is if Brandon Manning isn’t just a thug, and if the Hawks can finally conjure something from Gustav Forsling or fit Jokiharju on the roster. But again, that’s a lot of ifs.

What’s more likely, all that happens or Jonathan Toews’s aging curve continues the wrong way, as does Duncan Keith’s? Brent Seabrook continues to move around like Pizza The Hut? Forsling and Gustafsson prove to be nothing more than third-pairing bum-slayers and Q doesn’t find room for Jokiharju and he gets sent back to Portland? Sikura has a rough rookie season? And most of all Crawford isn’t Crawford, or isn’t even there?

You know which is more likely, even if only 50% of it happens. So either the Hawks mean what they say, and Q is out on his ass before 2019 hits, or they’re just whistling dixie, Jerry Angelo.

It wouldn’t be much of a hit anymore. A mid-season whacking (and who doesn’t love a good mid-season whacking?) would only see Q on the books for another season and a half, and that’s something an organization constantly in the mood to tell you they’re still not profitable would consider, especially when it’s the highest paid coach in the league.

Basically, we’ll know if the Hawks mean what they say come the Holidays, or it’s likely that we will.

Everything Else

The Folly Of Transparecy

By Sam Fels 2504 0

Friend of the program Jay Zawaski had some thoughts on Tuesday. This is a subject we discussed a lot last year, what was the Hawks real intent on the season versus what they told everyone it was and why there was a difference. Jay’s not wrong about anything he says here, and it is a nice thought he wishes for where the Hawks were completely transparent about what their plans are going forward.

But the more I think about it, what do they have to gain?

Quite simply, the Hawks are not going to sell more tickets if they tell everyone that they’re in the process of turning over the team to their younger players. I don’t know that they’d sell less, but their position in the Chicago sports landscape isn’t so secure that they would feel they can risk it. While telling us exactly what “The Plan” is would make us all feel better, our mental state isn’t of real importance to them. The Hawks quite simply can’t take the risk of telling their only casual fans that this season might not matter. And that’s assuming there is “a plan.”

Secondly, the Hawks can’t really send that message to Keith, to Seabrook, to Kane, to Toews, and maybe even especially to Crawford. While the organization might be looking at the days already where they’re no longer the main contributors, considering they’re the guys who pulled this organization out of the seventh level of hell they’re owed a certain amount of promises from the front office. You can’t really tell these guys that they’re going to spend the next season or two or three playing games that aren’t going to matter. Maybe they know it already, maybe they don’t, but you certainly can’t give them that message in public. And considering whatever Crawford is working his way back from (and right now “working” is just a claim), it would be truly unfair to have him bust his ass to come back to backstop a team his bosses just told everyone isn’t really relevant.

These guys are made, and I think the only way the Hawks could even consider it would be to meet with them privately and say this is where we want to go, and you have the option of being a part of it or not. These guys all have full NMCs and I doubt any of them are interested in moving, but they also might not want to have another playoff-less season or two.

At the same time, the Hawks simply can’t move them, because of the aforementioned fragility of their place in the market. Toews, Kane, Keith, Seabrook, and Crawford are still the players most fans can identify only and buy the tickets to see. You and I might go to see Top Cat’s or Schmaltz’s (or hopefully Jokiharju’s) development (because we’re sick and our lives our empty), but the guy or girl you work with doesn’t. Even if we passed through some undiscovered wormhole into a world where the Hawks could and would do a full tear-down, McDonough and Rocky are not going to stomach a season or two of a half-empty building. Not after all the back-slapping they’ve done with each other by taking the Hawks out of that by simply standing there while the roster that was already in place took shape.

However, the Hawks “rebuild” plan is flawed. You “rebuild, ” whether fully or on the fly, if you have players to build the future around. The Hawks don’t. Nick Schmaltz maxes out as a great #2 center. Maybe DeBrincat is a genuine top line scorer, and maybe he’s something of a tweener from a #1 or #2 LW. He could be any iteration of Phil Kessel, really. There’s no top-pairing d-man anywhere near ready. If you’re building a team around #2 centers and maybe 1st-line wingers, congratulations you’re the St. Louis Blues or the Minnesota Wild. And you know where that road goes and it’s nowhere pretty.

Which brings me to Erik Karlsson. If you’re a team that’s called about Justin Faulk, then you’d obviously call about Erik Karlsson because Erik Karlsson is the absolute idealized version of Justin Faulk. Sure, the Hawks would have to clear out Hossa’s contract to fit him in for this season, and then need more salary cap rises to accommodate him for the next contract he’s going to sign. But based on what’s been rumored to be the return from the Stars or Lightning, the Hawks could probably match it.

So if they’re not rebuilding, and they say they aren’t, and they’re after Justin Faulk, why aren’t they calling? Why aren’t they at least saying they’re calling? Karlsson is the quickest route to maximizing whatever you have left in “the core.” If you’re stated aim of competing every season is your actual aim, and we don’t know that it is, you’d be in on this. You would have been in on Tavares too, but the Hawks didn’t even get in the room.

McClure has a theory that the Hawks would never take on any player that would have to be paid more than Toews and Kane (which is funny in itself, because Keith has been the most important player throughout this run but that’s another discussion). Karlsson doesn’t make that yet but obviously will. I wonder if that’s the case and whether that really matters to either if they’re staring at finishing out their careers playing on middling teams.

Given what’s already on the roster, the Hawks simply can’t be bad enough to draft high enough to get a true difference maker without a shit-ton of luck either in the lottery or by getting a player of that quality in the spots they don’t generally come from. So why are those picks so important? And if everyone’s job is on the line like they claim, wouldn’t you be after the one player that basically assures everyone keeps their job? Karlsson takes this dreck and at worst it’s a playoff team with a healthy Crawford (and maybe even not). That would at least see Quenneville finish the season and Stan get to see out whatever his plan is.

But again, there’s no impetus for them to tell us. The sweaty hand-clappers and their ugly fucking kids will still be at the Convention happily sopping up whatever tripe they’re fed. There won’t be much scrutiny from a press corps that has the Cubs and Bears training camp a mere two weeks away. Quite simply, the Hawks won’t tell us what they’re doing because they don’t have to.

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Well Pilgrim, Not Until You Eat The Peanuts Outta My…-FFUD’s Player Reviews: Patrick Sharp or You Can’t Go Home Again

By Sam Fels 2078 0

There’s little point in rehashing the details of Patrick Sharp’s farewell tour here. You know how it went, I know how it went, he knows how it went. And really, for the $1 million he was paid and the 4th line role he basically played, it wasn’t a disaster. Maybe his mentoring of Alex DeBrincat will become more important than we can realize here on the outside. Who knows? Sharp came back, it kind of just happened, we all shared our memories of him again (and there are so many), and we’ll all move on.

Still, Sharp’s acquisition raises some discussion about just what the Hawks do in the front office. Because no matter what your conclusion is, none of it makes you feel good about the inner workings of how the Hawks put together a team. So there are three ways this could have happened, right?

One, Stan Bowman saw Sharp decompose in Dallas, along with the hip surgery, and thought he could genuinely help this team. Maybe he figured it was only a million bucks, it was a signing his coach would actually give every chance to which most certainly has not been the case with a lot of signings, and took the plunge. Either way, there were many other fourth liners for even cheaper, and third liners, that the Hawks could have gone out and got and probably would have contributed more. Sharp hardly torpedoed the Hawks season, nor would someone else in that slot have saved it, it’s just somewhere you could have done better.

Two, John McDonough came down and told them they needed to sell more of the new jerseys with the reverse-preacher collar and bringing back ol’ #10 would help them do that. It would continue a pattern for the Hawks of getting the band back together, which has simply never worked in the past. The only “Old Boy” to come back and make any contribution that mattered that I can remember is one Kris Versteeg rush in Game 5 against Tampa that Antoine Vermette scored the winner off of. But McD has got to sell his shirts, he’s got to get his headlines, and he’s got to get pats on the back from the construction workers who yell at him outside his office window (even though that building is done now I assume McD keeps those workers there so he can have a barometer of how he’s doing).

Three, Joel Quenneville is still fuming from the trade of Niklas Hjalmarsson (and he would piss all over all season to the detriment of the team) so Stan and/or McD decide to throw him a bone by bringing back yet another player he once loved. And this has been the thinking in bringing back Versteeg, Ladd, Oduya, and whatever other stiff I can’t remember right now that basically gurgled in place once they returned. Stan recognizes a problem or deficiency on the roster, knows how other acquisitions have gone over with his coach, and resigns himself to bringing back a player at least he knows Q will play. Q’s circle of trust takes eons and miracles to expand, so Stan is restricted to getting players who were already in it and are past it or hoping and praying that a new player can enter within. It only took Connor Murphy 60 games, and he was the Hawks best d-man the whole fucking season.

So either the Hawks’ pro scouting sucks to high heaven (it just might!), the president who doesn’t know shit on shit about hockey is getting to make some calls that don’t have shit on shit to do with hockey, or the coach is still getting to make the call on some toys which quite simply has rarely worked out. Hmm, wanna know how you win three playoff games over three years?

None of this has much to do with Sharp, of course. He was what he was, and it’s not like he didn’t try or didn’t do what he could. And I don’t need to pile on. McClure has written a better eulogy than I could for his Hawks career when he was traded. Hess did it again in our final spotlight for the final game of the season. We had a podcast section about it.

So I’d love to wax poetic about the shorthanded goal in Game 2 against Vancouver in ’10, where he basically just decided he was scoring, but we’ve been there. What I will say is that watching Patrick Sharp’s first few games in red in the first season out of the lockout, it was really the first sign that Tallon and the Hawks got it and were working on something. It was immediately clear Tallon had gotten it wrong out of that lockout, and to him as well. There was no way to see what Sharp would go on to accomplish (unless you were McClure), but you could tell he was intelligent, fast, and there was more skill there than was billed on arrival. And you thought to yourself, “If Tallon can get a few more players like this, nail a couple picks, and have a couple kids develop out of nowhere…” It was a long road to envision, but Sharp helped you finally see it.

Anyway, good luck to Sharp-shooter in whatever’s next. He won’t be a Hall of Famer or anything, but he’ll go down as something of a cult Hawks hero. And that’s more than ok.

Everything Else

Let’s Discuss All Things McD

By Sam Fels 2395 0

Well, not all things. But there are a couple things out in the bloodstream I’d like to talk about. The first was this from last week’s 31 Thoughts by Elliote Friedman. Before we get to the actual merits of the idea McDonough suggested at the GM meetings, I can’t help but smirk at the, “But we’re still paying them, right?,” line. Really lets you know where things are in the minds of really all presidents and owners. Yes John, you’re still paying them. Just like NFL players that don’t dress on Sundays (there are seven of the 53 who don’t), or the guys in suits at the end of an NBA bench. What McDonough is really asking here is probably more to the point of if they can find a way to not pay them then to sub them in.

But it’s his idea of having the option of subbing in players mid-game that gets the press here, and I have to say it’s at least worth thinking about. Much like a sub in soccer, it would bring one player out for the rest of the game while keeping the subbed in one involved the rest of the way. Injuries wouldn’t be as serious to a team in a game if after the period or even immediately you could dress one of your scratches.

The strategy of it would be the real watch. As this season has gone along I’ve been more and more leaning toward seeing teams dress seven d-men and have 11 forwards, and having your three or four best forwards get the extra shifts. Just here in town, what would be more preferable: getting Andreas Martinesen 12 minutes or seeing Kane, Saad, DeBrincat getting an extra two or three minutes? Think of it like batting your best hitter in the #2 spot. It’s become the new thing to do, because over a season you wring an extra 50 or more ABs. Well, two-three minutes a game over a full season probably nets you more goals, and these days things are settled on a handful of goals for or against.

This would only extend that. Down in a game you could bring in your cowboy d-man whom you’re afraid to play over a game or your shutdown guy who can’t really be trusted either. Or an extra forward if you want, It probably can’t sway too many games because if a certain player was that good he wouldn’t be scratched anyway. But still, it provides intrigue.

There’s only one downside that I can see: This would give coaches an easier outlet to have a goon/thug on the roster and only play him for a period. You can easily see a team getting whomped one night and a coach reaching for perhaps the most childish and dumbest hockey tradition of “message sending.” So out for the third comes whatever barely developed beast the team has out of the cage where he was tossed raw meat and fish heads to “stir shit up” and really cause a scene. You know this would happen. And we’d all be dumber for it.

There are obviously questions. How do you keep these players warm for a period or two? Simply riding the bike isn’t going to be enough. Can they get a five-minute skate at intermissions before the zambonis come out? Maybe, maybe not, and with the intermission mishegas it’s even less likely. But there’s probably a way.

It’s worth thinking about. The NHL shouldn’t outright dismiss any new ideas right now, and this doesn’t significantly warp the game while giving coaches more options and keeping players more involved. Maybe teams are more tempted to give their stars nights and periods off if they can, and keep them fresh for when it really matters, which really should be a bigger concern in the league. It’s worth talking about.

-As for McDonough’s day job, I see more people yelling at Lazerus and the other beat writers about who will GM the Hawks next year. I think a history lesson is important.

You may not have been around then, but when McD and Rocky first took over they knew enough to know they didn’t know jack or shit about hockey. So they brought in Scotty Bowman as their de facto president of hockey operations. It was Scotty who told them they’ll never figure out what they have on the roster if they don’t get a real coach in there, and only waited four games to whack Denis Savard thanks to Quenneville’s DUI the previous summer. (and it was also Scotty who probably told them to find a way to torpedo Tallon to hire his son, but considering how the 08-09 season went, that was put on hold for a year). Scotty advised them on pretty much every hockey decision.

So for those who want Stan fired, keep in mind that Scotty is unlikely to help find a replacement for his son, and he’s also 135 years old now. That would leave McD and Rocky to their own devices, and quite frankly I can’t help but think it might result in something looking like the Bears “search firm” adventures of the past, or seeing which way Ernie Accorsi’s wig is pointing that day.

Perhaps in ten years McDonough has taken time out from telling everyone what a great job he’s done or slathering himself in his own praise while presiding over one of the more born-on-third organizations in sports to get some connections and plug himself in a bit more to actual hockey goings-on. But I wouldn’t be so sure. Remember his presidency of the Cubs wasn’t even two years and all he did there was open the checkbook for Jim Hendry and his barrel to prepare for the sale of the team. This isn’t a man with a “grand plan.”

There will come a time that Stan has to be fired or let go or he’ll walk and McD will have to find his replacement on his own. I’m just not sure you want that ASAP.

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What Do You Do With Duncan Keith So Early In The Morning?

By Sam Fels 2417 0

A couple weeks ago, our colleague and probably the most flowing lochs in the Hawks blogosphere Chris Block gave his state of the Hawks post. There’s a lot in there, some of which you might not have known, but there’s one part of it I’ve been meaning to dive deeper into. I do encourage you to read the whole thing though, and then give Chris a hard time for bailing out of doing Wrestlemania with me even though it was his idea.

At the end of this, Block ruminates on whether or not the Hawks should at least kick the tires on moving Duncan Keith this summer. The reasons are pretty clear. The Hawks have to get out from under some of their ridiculous contracts (although Keith has been worth every penny, any contract that runs 13 years has to be considered ridiculous). Keith is getting older. While the hit remains the same the actual salary starts diving next year making him even more affordable than he already was. And Keith is aging, and not all that gracefully at that.

We’ve talked about it a few times over the years, but looking for Keith precedents in previous players is a hard thing to do. Few d-men have dominated games and seasons simply on quickness and instincts, as Keith did for far longer than he had any right to. One name we have used is Scott Niedermayer. He retired after his age-36 season (Keith will be entering his age-35 season next year). And Niedermayer was more offensively gifted than Keith and by some distance. The hands don’t go away even if the feet do. Keith has no such attributes to fall back on.

Yes, Nick Lidstrom played until he was 41, and comedically won a Norris at 40 simply because voters didn’t know they could vote for anyone else. But Lidstrom’s game was much more calm than Keith’s, sort of letting things come to him and simply being ahead of everything in his mind. There was no high-wire with Lidstrom. Keith’s game has been all high-wire since the moment he arrived and looked like a kindergartner who got hold of Jolt Cola (dated reference alert).

Watching Keith this year has been mostly an uncomfortable experience. You can see his computer trying to recalibrate with how to play knowing he can’t take all the risks and be as aggressive as he used to be. Keith could actually do a lot of things wrong in the past and his quickness would allow recovery to see him get away with it. He could venture outside the circles in his own zone, he could chase more in to the corners or behind the net, he could skate into more traffic with the puck and squirt out. He can’t really do all of those things anymore, but the internal mechanism is still saying he can too often. His instincts and brain constantly seem to be at odds.

That doesn’t mean Keith is useless or a complete anchor, as say Seabrook has been at times this season. He hasn’t been anything like a ghost like Sharp has been on most nights, to use two his contemporaries. To me, the worst case scenario with Keith is that he can be an effective second-pairing d-man, and probably can for a couple more seasons. And I think he could do that in a couple of ways. Against easier competition he could still push the play up the ice as he used to. Or you could just use him as a human shield as Oduya was used here, or Dan Hamhuis is used in Dallas right now, or Pesce and Slavin are used in Carolina, or a few other examples. You’d ask no offensive or puck-moving responsibility of him, and just have him basically keep the puck out of his net against top lines while whoever is designated for the top pairing role can simply run over what they see.

But therein lies the problem. Whichever you choose to do with Keith, you then have to solve your top pairing problem. I’m one of the few who is comfortable with Connor Murphy as one half of that, but you need the other half and that’s the half that has to be the possession monster. That’s the half that has to get up and push the play, join the offense, and score. And right now, that’s nowhere near in the Hawks system. Unless by some miracle they think Henri Jokiharju can do that next season. I suppose Ivan Provorov went straight from the WHL to the Flyers, so it can happen. But he wasn’t asked to play on the top pairing either. We know it ain’t gonna be Gustav Forsling either.

Keith would still have value to other teams, if he were to waive his NMC. Off the top of my head, the Islanders, Leafs, Flames, Oilers, Canadiens are all teams that have defensive depth issues that want to win sharpish. We could probably figure out a couple other teams that would at least make a call, even with Keith’s age and expense.

But still, does Keith get you back a young, top-pairing potential d-man? Skeptical of that. If you’re just swapping him out for more mid-pairing or bottom-pairing flotsam, I don’t know that moves you forward. Yeah, if you can get the Oilers to give up on Nurse, go right ahead. And I guess they’re capable of any kind of stupidity.

For the Hawks, Keith is almost certainly the most movable of “the core.” They wouldn’t ever dare move Toews or Kane, given how their entire marketing strategy has been built on them, problematically at times, for going on 11 years now. Seabrook’s play has made his deal immovable. Keith has never had the connection with the Hawks that the two forwards do. You don’t see him on the Chevy ads or the posters, and that’s mostly because he doesn’t have much interest. Keith is also the only one you see openly flouting McD’s rules about how to be presented during interviews and such. He clearly just does not give a fuck about that aspect of being a pro hockey player, and honestly more power to him. While on the ice Keith has been the most important cog to the Hawks success (and he has, don’t even play), he hasn’t been nearly as important to the Hawks off it. And don’t think that wouldn’t play a role.

Still, I doubt the Hawks and Stan Bowman would do this unless they got some offer they couldn’t refuse. But it seems more plausible than it did even just a month or two ago.

Everything Else

Not Only Are They Now Stupid On The Ice, They Remain Breathtakingly Stupid Off It

By Sam Fels 7881 0

Please, tell me again what a marketing genius John McDonough is and how there should be classes taught at Wharton about his and Rocky Wirtz’s revival of the Hawks. Really, I want you to stuff me full of all your glowing takes and tributes until my eyeballs shoot out of my head like I was a Roger Rabbit character. I don’t even need oxygen anymore, that’s what I need.

There are 20 other players on this team. And believe it or not, some of them don’t actually cause bile to rise in parts of the fanbase, if not outright rage.

I don’t even know where to start with this. So let’s run through the possibilities of the Blackhawks marketing/social media team had go through their pea-sized brains to put this out. And believe me when I tell you that none of these are going to be encouraging.

One, they think the residue from the Kane ’15 stuff has all blown over, or the Madison escapades, or the hundreds of stories about him from around town that you know if you know exactly one bar employee, past or present. Because two years is so long in the internet age.

Two, they’re still actively trying to rehab his image still, even though the only thing he and the team really have ever apologized for is the negative publicity he has caused.

Three, they have no idea why this would be a problem.

That’s the good stuff there, people. Cut it up and snort it.

I get the Hawks can’t really help it if Chevy wants to use him and Toews in their ads, still trying to cash in on the “kids” angle from 2008 (and I’m sure they have to film these separately because I’ll let you in on a little secret, the two of them don’t really like each other). I suppose it’s not the Hawks problem if the NHL still wants to put this dickwagon front and center of their marketing campaign. But what they do on their social media and their marketing campaigns is certainly their choice. And this is the one they made.

What someone is going to have to explain to the Hawks staff, using very small words I’m sure, is that Kane stands for everything that You Can Play is supposed to be against. It’s not just the player himself of course, but his raft of fanboys and sycophants who rubbed their own shit on their chest before professing their love of Kane and their declaration of hatred or even violence against anyone who just wanted the Hawks and their fans to pause for once second two years ago. That would be the opposite of welcoming. That’s intolerance, it’s hate, it’s lack of understanding or empathy.

Whether the Hawks want to admit it or not, everyone basically know what a piece of shit personally Kane was and almost certainly still is. And that’s not cleared up by a Hart Trophy or more goals. And that’s fine, I don’t think anyone thinks we live in a world where the Hawks would cast out anyone they found immoral. No sports team would. Given that they reinstated a minor leaguer who got off on revenge porn charges on a simple technicality, morality isn’t something the Hawks would even know how to spell much less adhere to.

This is where I want McDonough to come out and tell me he’s not tone deaf again, because I haven’t had a good, hearty laugh in a while, one that causes my stomach to lock and nearly vomit. I’d be lying if I said, as a Hawks fan mind you, that there isn’t a part of me that doesn’t rejoice that the Hawks haven’t won a playoff round since they completely embarrassed themselves and sickened some fans on that September day in South Bend. And that part of me thinks they probably shouldn’t until Kane retires to whatever Frat House for 45-year-olds exists somewhere and McDonough and Rocky get to be completely exposed for the frauds they most certainly are.

Speaking of which, do the Hawks think they and Kane are 100% insulated from ducking the #MeToo wave? Because I’d be willing to bet that will end in one hell of a surprise, somewhere down the line. And I’d wager as well that one day we’re going to find out the Hawks cut a check or two or 12 or 100 to keep Kane and /or someone else out of the headlines once or twice, given the Mossad they have following around their players at night. And we know about Kane’s “fixer” in Buffalo. Look what happened to Shaun White yesterday. Took all of five minutes for Twitter to be like, “Hey, this guy is a douch-canoe with a settled sexual harassment suit in his past.” Maybe it’s a forlorn hope, but I get through the days knowing that it’s coming for everyone, even if I’m dead when it happens.

What’s so galling is that it’s so simple for the Hawks in cases like this. Fuck, Tommy Wingels helped found You Can Play! He’s sitting right there. Just accept your star winger is a fuckstick, and that you don’t have to put him on the front page of things that are about acceptance, tolerance, and understanding. Or do I have to remind you about the anti-semitic remarks in Madison again?

The Hawks still operate in service, or in fear of, the loudmouth, male portion of their fanbase that, as stated earlier, rubs shit on their chest. That’s the reason they’ve never hinted at changing the logo or the name. That’s why they’d never appear to be gun-shy about Kane. Because they fear the rantings and ravings of that group, even though we all know that’s the group of fans that would never go anywhere and in fact would be first in line to buy the new jerseys should they ever change the log. So does the NHL as a whole. Speaking of which..

Maybe it’s coming for the whole league one day. A boy can dream. Until then I’ll just sift through this waking nightmare.

Everything Else

Now Here Is Nowhere

By Sam Fels 2709 0

Last night’s frustrating loss whipped up a little more vitriol and angst than previous losses have. Perhaps it was the manner, as the Hawks did play well, couldn’t finish, and were on the donkey end of a couple calls (one not egregious, one that really defies belief). Still, the Hawks only scored one goal that mattered, really none at even-strength, and you’re going to get what you get when you do that. Which is not much and basically a handful of yourself.

And while it hurts to say, given the results everywhere else it’s left the playoff hopes in tatters, and now the Hawks are going to need something bordering on miraculous to even get back into the discussion. Which means the knives are coming out, and that means people want guillotine fodder.

It’s understandable. While I don’t think anyone expected this team to repeat last year’s regular season, this has been a disappointment. The injury to Crawford has been more crucial than anyone wants to admit, because no one wants to admit their team hinges so heavily on a goalie. But the Hawks are hardly alone in this. If Pekka Rinne weren’t having a renaissance season at 35 the Preds would be way off where they are, because they really haven’t been a good defensive team yet this year. The Jets and Hellebuyck. Vegas and their rotating cast of clowns. When the Kings were riding high it was because Quick was throwing a .940 at the league. Even Tampa, the best team in the league, has Vasilevskiy as a Vezina leader. Rask has lifted Boston. This is just how the league works now.

But that’s not enough for a lot, and I don’t know that they’re wrong. People want the house cleaned, and that’s both GM and coach.

Our feelings on the coach are well-known at this point, so let’s save that for a bit later. When it comes to any possible firing of Stan Bowman, one has to ask what the expectations for him and the team really were, not what they said they were, and what mistakes you’re firing him for.

If Stan is truly, and being allowed, to try and engineer a rebuild on the fly and the results this year aren’t quite as important as next season’s or the one after that, you’d have to say his results at worst are just on the positive side. Nick Schmaltz has proven to be a bonafide #2 center in this league. Alex DeBrincat looks to be a future top line sniper, with a dash of vision thrown in. The Connor Murphy trade was a good one, whatever his coach or blinded local media seem to think. Vinnie Hinostroza and David Kampf look like they can be bottom-six contributors on a good team.

Yes, Brandon Saad has disappointed. Maybe that could have been scouted out in Columbus, because he did do this at times there, too. But the thought was that being back in Chicago and on the top line would reinvigorate him. Stan was hardly the only one who thought that. Other than Kane, the other veterans have not performed up to their usual standards. But what was the alternative there? They’re going to be here until they retire.

Ah, this is where the discussion begins. Brent Seabrook’s contract. Ok, let’s have it. Let’s go back in time. Even if I were to grant you that Seabrook’s extension was all Stan’s decision, and I won’t, remember when this contract was signed. Three months after a third parade. It would have taken quite the tires for any GM to let Seabrook go into the last year of his deal, after he was a major, major cog in a third triumph (and you forget how good he was that spring) and then simply let him walk. Or better yet, trade him right after the confetti had fallen to the Soldier Field ground or during the season. I can’t think of a precedent for it. Yes, you might point to the purge after the first Cup, but there was no alternative there. And all of Ladd, Byfuglien, Sopel, Versteeg, even Niemi, were more contributors than cornerstones. Seabrook was a cornerstone. Yes, the Penguins let Trevor Daley walk after two Cups. Trevor Daley also sucks and always has. You’ll notice they probably overpaid for Justin Schultz. They’ve hinted at trading Kris Letang, which would be a comp, except he’s been fragile his whole career and wasn’t even part of last year’s run. Seabrook was neither of those two things at the time.

Yes, perhaps Stan could have played more hardball (again, if this was up to him). Maybe he could have gotten less years on it, but that probably only raises the AAV. And quite simply, hardball negotiations are not something the Hawks do. They’re terrified of it. That’s why they traded Saad the first time instead of waiting him out and imagining an incoming offer sheet that simply was never going to happen. It’s why they’ve twice handed Toews and Kane extensions well before their deals were up that were probably higher than they had to be. It’s why Crow got his deal, though man does that look like a bargain now. They just don’t do it. Their first priority, it seems, is to be seen as THE player-friendly organization.

Stan’s biggest mistakes were losing Teuvo, Johns, and Danault for essentially nothing (though the latter was in a go-for-it trade that simply didn’t work). Even if we accept they had to go, you can’t lose young players like that for nothing in return. And that’s the ground that Stan is trying to make up. I would argue that he had to lose those players to pay other ones to please coach and president, but I won’t be able to prove that until someone writes the tell-all book in about 10 years.

Another thing Stan is working against this campaign is that due to the NHL’s incomprehensibly stupid cap-recapture penalties, he wasn’t really allowed to do anything with Hossa’s money. The Hawks chose not to use the LTIR money in the summer so they could have flexibility during the season, and that’s understandable. What’s not is that they had to make that decision at all. Hossa’s contract was not against the rules when signed, so why should any team be punished for that after the fact? The blame could go to the players’ union as well here, who simply lied down and accepted this ridiculous rule without any fight.

If Hossa could have simply retired and freed up the money, which he should have been able to do, it’s not like the last free agent class was staggering but there were players who could have helped, whatever the aims of this season. Bonino? Shattenkirk (was only going to the Rangers but you get it)? Radulov? Hainsey? Kulikov? Varying degrees here, but clearly some if not all would have helped. The Hawks couldn’t do any of it because of cap-recapture. That seems like a pretty big obstacle.

If you’re firing Stan, it’s for either not starting this rebuild-on-the-fly in the immediate aftermath of a Cup, which seems just about impossible. Or you’re firing him because you don’t like where this is going, and as stated above that’s not correct. Or you’re firing him because players got old.

I’m not saying this roster turnover is going to work next year or the one after, and then it won’t matter anyway, I don’t think. But if indeed that’s what’s going on here, Stan should get to see it to its completion. And if that falls short, then I give you permission to fire him.

Everything Else

The Secrecy To Nowhere Leads To Me, Q, Kid Rock, Why Hockey Is The Circus Clown Of Sports

By Sam Fels 2599 0

Took a few days off myself during the bye and let the proletariat handle it. So clearly there’s some stuff to get through since if you give the Hawks enough time without any games they probably will trip over their own dicks.

-I can’t add too much to what Pullega and Rose have put up over the past couple days about Corey Crawford. It’s once again proof that trying to shroud yourself in secrecy just isn’t going to work.

Some people want to claim that the Hawks and really most NHL teams’ sprint to the stronghold of information blackouts springs from the NFL’s. NFL coaches are a poisonous combination of paranoid to the point of tin foil chapeaus, while also convinced of their own genius that their systems and gameplans should be studied at Wharton if not The Louvre for generations (though a fun game might be getting NFL coaches to define The Louvre, if not spell it). This is what happens when you give guys a full week of nothing to do but convince themselves of threats as they work 19-hour days and can’t remember the names of their daughters.

I don’t think hockey’s comes from that. It’s part that, sure, but hockey coaches and execs have always been too dismissive/stupid/mealy-mouthed to actually share information. The fear has always been that if you announce a player has an ankle problem, every player on your next opponent is basically going to do everything up to and including chair-shots on said ankle. Hockey being hockey, this isn’t totally far-fetched.

But with the Hawks, they should have learned long ago that if you have a period of silence, anything and everything is eventually going to fill up that void with all sorts of noise and you’re going to end up speaking about it anyway. And that’s where the Hawks find themselves.

I don’t know what they hoped to gain by plugging their fingers in their ears and shouting the chorus to “Caravan” as a team policy. This was always going to happen. Maybe they feared exposure of once again not handling a head injury correctly. Here’s an idea, and I know this is totally out there but maybe next time just handle the head injury correctly?

-This Crawford stuff has buried another nugget from Hawks fans’ favorite radio host Dan Bernstein on 670 The Score. While discussing the Crow weirdness he also let it be known that behind closed doors Joel Quenneville is still seething about the trade of Niklas Hjalmarsson. I couldn’t help but joke in my head that when the discussion on the afternoon show turned to whether or not Hawks fans watched other teams that maybe they should ask if the coach does as well.

By any measure, Hjalmarsson has been bad on a really bad Coyotes team this year. And if you were paying attention you saw a precipitous decline in the second half of last year. While his shot-blocking certainly got the most slobber treatment from Eddie O and apparently Q himself (and this is something that really needs to stop because you shouldn’t aim to be blocking shots as a go-to), that was far from Hammer’s most important attribute. While he was a stay-at-home d-man, he had greater mobility than most who fit that role. Which meant much like Keith and Oduya and even Seabrook back in the day, he could step up at his line and squeeze the space for opponents while not having to fear being beat to the outside. In addition, there may not have been a better Hawk d-man at making that 5-10 foot pass under duress, often blind, from the corner or below the goal line to the front of the net to a waiting Hawks center to release all the pressure and get the Hawks out of the zone.

Well, Hammer lost the step that allowed him to step up at his line. He lost the half-step to make that and other breakout passes as often as he could. And that’s not going to get better.

But it certainly explains the Connor Murphy scratchings at the slightest misstep #5 makes. It would hardly be the first time that Q has tried to either make a point to his GM, or simply stick it to him. Brad Richards starting behind Andrew Shaw on the center depth chart to start a season comes to mind, as does Steve Montador starting a season on the wing or Antoine Vermette playing a wing after arrival. There are others. Murphy is being held to an at-times unfair scale simply because his coach cries on a framed picture of a certain Swede before going to bed at night. Even with that, he’s been the Hawks best d-man by some distance this season.

This is where you wish the Hawks though they could be as transparently operated as both baseball teams in town are at the moment. Because if Stan truly envisioned this as a “transitional” season, and his quotes suggest he very well might have, he’d finally have a cudgel over his coach. If this is about getting the Schmaltzes and DeBrincats and Forslings of the world grounded, as well as getting Murphy into the Hawks’ “Martz-ian” system, Stan would have evidence to take to his bosses/fans about how his coach is getting in the way. And it would keep Q in line or maybe Stan would finally get to hire his own coach that he actually has a relationship with.

Instead, we get more of the same push and pull between coach and GM, and at this point it’s tiresome for all.

-I don’t know there’s much more I can add to the hysterical-if-it-wasn’t-sad choice of Kid Rock to perform at the All-Star game. The best case scenario for the NHL is that they’re just wildly ignorant, which isn’t encouraging. The simplistic explanation is that someone simply saw a google photo of him in a Red Wings jersey at a game and thought that was enough. Does he still do that now that they suck? Or is he more in the CM Punk fashion where he’s only around if it helps his brand?

Once again hockey has quivered in fear of a portion of the fanbase it would actually probably rather do without, and that’s the old angry white guy. And yes, if you listen to Kid Rock you’re old now. Sorry. You also suck, and I would gladly trade my life to bring Warren Zevon back to his only long enough so he could impale Kid on a flaming spear for stealing his song.

It’s that fanbase that keeps hockey from banning fighting which it would really like to, or enforcing the rules even harder to open up the game, or heavily suspending players for hits to the head/dirty play. But no, the NHL is terrified that the angry white dude who measures his own dick by how “tough” he perceives the sport he watches to be we’ll up and leave if they ever did any of this. You and I both know he won’t, because he has nowhere else to go (unless they did all this and Vince McMahon was convinced he could start an XHL and oh god this is going to happen isn’t it?), but the NHL has always operated out of fear and ignorance. Which is why they won’t backtrack on this either, although they’ll continue to celebrate Will O’Ree and Hockey Is For Everyone and You Can Play right along with it. Good stuff there.

Which is why it will always be a joke to most everyone else.