Everything Else

It’s All Over Now, Baby Q

By Sam Fels 5506 0

It was always going to end like this. It shouldn’t have ended like this.

You knew from the summer on it was going to be some kind of American Gladiator obstacle (or do I say Titan Games now?) for Joel Quenneville to finish this season. The Hawks hadn’t won a playoff game in two years, which in some ways is eons in this hockey world and also how the Hawks see themselves. There had to be a turnaround and quickly.

For that turnaround, Corey Crawford had to return and not be rusty at all from jump street (hasn’t happened). Every young kid on the roster would have to take at least a step forward, if not a leap (incomplete there). Every veteran would have to rediscover some kind of form from three to four to five years ago (Toews yes, Saad sorta, Keith no, Seabrook whatever). And they would have to do that for 82 games. Well, we’re at Game #15 and you know how it’s gone.

Better yet, let my compadre Matt McClure sum it up best:

It is kind of clear that Q never quite adjusted to what the NHL and how his roster fit into that had become. And we can debate whether or not the Hawks tried to change how the defend in their own zone this season, though with how bewildered Keith has looked at times there obviously have been changes. But the game’s speed no longer allows for the intricate exits the Hawks perfected when they were the league’s leading light. Even if it did, the Hawks don’t have the players with the precision to pull it off. And yet for most of the past two seasons, that’s what they’ve been trying to do. You see the results.

These days, it’s not really about that. It’s get it out and get it up, and have your d-men follow in behind. Unless they can do it all themselves like the pack in Nashville or San Jose can. The Hawks don’t have that. But they’re trying neither. The last three years have seen teams with blue lines led by Nate Schmidt or Brian Dumoulin or Matt Niskanen play for Cups. You can take your lack of depth back there out of the equation if you play it right.

That doesn’t mean if the Hawks emulated what the Penguins or Knights did in style they’d be good now. What was clear is that what the Hawks are doing doesn’t work and they have to try anything else. Q isn’t about trying anything else. And really, why would he? His ways have gotten him just a fair amount of silverware. He might tweak things here or there, but massive changes aren’t his bag. They never needed to be.

It’s deeper than that. The Hawks are way too easy to get through the neutral zone on, and with the speed and exuberance they have at forward, that shouldn’t be. The power play we could go over, and yes the Hawks won in the past without one, but this team needs one and the coaches have never had an answer for it. It’s why there’s a new personnel grouping every opportunity. They’ve been throwing shit at a wall for years.

There’s more. Don’t think the treatment of players like Michal Kempny doesn’t factor into this. There’s no way it didn’t absolutely enrage Stan to see what Kempny became in DC and there being utterly no excuse for him to not be used here. Connor Murphy’s early treatment might also fall into this category. Scratching Nick Schmaltz after being stuck on a line with two bozos for a run of games could fall here as well. Do we want to go through the TVR Experience again?

They won’t say it, but you could see where the veterans might need a new voice as well. The constant line shuffling the past couple years seemed to only generate eye-rolls from Toews and Kane and the like, at least on the ice. Seabrook’s determination to be in the best shape over the past few years wouldn’t suggest locked-in focus, would it?

That doesn’t mean Q is all to blame, or even close. I’ve become a house-clearing guy (not the Ed McMahon thing, you ninny) for a while now. To me, the extension of Jan Rutta and signing of Brandon Manning at all are fireable offenses on their own. But reasonably, there’s only so much you can do with this roster. There are maybe four NHL d-men on this team.  One is 19. One is a fading legend. One is Seabrook, and the other is Erik Gustafsson, who in reality is a #6 on any team worth a shit. That changes when Murphy is healthy, but no one seems to know when that will be or what that will even look like with a back injury in tow. Ask Dave Bolland how that tends to go, and he wasn’t 6-5.

There are what, seven NHL forwards? Toews, Kane, Saad, Top Cat, Schmaltz, Anisimov (barely)…Kampf? We can say Kahun based on what we’ve seen, but there’s a long way to go before that’s official. Again, there wasn’t much to work with.

What I won’t do is what the Kings and their fans claimed after John Stevens got axed, and that the problem was the team was lifeless or the like. The Hawks never did look like they didn’t care, at least most of the time. They just looked like they were running a playbook from another era of the NHL, which basically they were.

Jeremy Colliton has a near-impossible job as well, and I can’t even begin to think what the bar for success the Hawks have in mind for him. He’s going to have to sell what he wants and quickly to Keith (who is older than Colliton), Seabrook, Crawford, Kane, and Toews, and you can’t find a more accomplished group of veterans anywhere in the league (outside of Pittsburgh, and there’s only three of them). If they’re not on board, you’re pretty much fucked. He has to get a raft of young players to play above themselves to make anything of this season, having never done so in the NHL. He’s only been in the AHL a year-plus.

Still, this is a team that could do with just something different. You could see the boredom and familiarity with their play at times the past few years. I imagine Dylan Sikura is up soon, and when he is, it’s not like the forwards are slow. Get Schmaltz back to center, get up the ice and let’s just go.

It was obvious where this season was heading. This was the one trigger to pull to try and head it off somewhere else. After what Joel Quenneville accomplished here, he clearly deserved a better ending. But coaches, in any sport, almost never get those. Down the road, in a few years, he’ll get his banner night here. And the ending will be forgotten.

It was always going to end like this, because it almost always does.

 

 

Everything Else

Defending Your Life, And Losing

By Sam Fels 1939 0

I don’t know that we’ll make it strict blog policy, but I think it’s important that when analyzing and discussing the Hawks we always keep in mind their “real” record. That’s hard to decipher in the NHL at times, as they do everything they can to ensure the standings are what are interpreted as what a team really is. So the OT results can cloud things a bit, or sometimes more so. Right now, the Hawks are a 3-5-6 team. That’s essentially what they’ve earned. They have six ties, and three regulation wins: in Columbus where they were severely outplayed for most of it, and over the Ducks and Rangers who both suck eggs. If viewed through that prism, then recent results don’t really surprise.

Coming into this season, the biggest problem the Hawks had was that they were a bad defensive team last year. And that’s being kind. You might be tempted to describe them as “abominable” defensively. While the goaltending was awful without Corey Crawford, no one was pretending that he wasn’t Atlas-ing a very creaky if not downright faulty ship. The team didn’t seem to lie to you about it either, as they knew they were terrible in their own end and the neutral zone. Clearly changes had to be made not just personnel-wise, but structurally as well.

We’ll get to those changes in a minute, but the story so far is that they haven’t worked. The amount of attempts the Hawks give up at even-strength has gone from 58.1 per 60 to 58.0. Not exactly a cataclysmic improvement. Their shots against per 60 at evens has gone from 32.1 to 31.8. Again, an improvement but not enough and still one of the worst marks around. And their expected goals against per 60 has actually gotten worse, and by a noticeable margin, from 2.54 per 60 last year to 2.74 this year (about an 8% increase). So even if they’re giving up a shade less attempts and shots, they’re giving up even better chances than they did last year, and last year was a veritable waterfall of chances against (which you shouldn’t go chasing, as you well know by now).

What’s been clear in the season’s first 14 games is that Joel Quenneville appears to be trying to install a more aggressive tweak to the defensive system. It’s not an overhaul, and the Hawks were always aggressive–trying to stop rushes ahead of their line, going into the corners and half-boards as the slightest sign of an opening, etc.–as well as going with a more zonal system. But now the Hawks, at times, send two guys after the puck, are chasing behind their own net far more than I can remember, and are trying to step up even higher into the neutral zone.

The question one might ask is if this is a prudent change with a defense that overall has gotten even slower. Because the Hawks just don’t get there, which is leaving even bigger gaps than they had last year. Let’s look at some goals from recent games. Now, the following may seem like we’re trying to single out Brandon Manning, and we’re not….well, ok, that’s not the sole intention. But he is a good example of a player ill-suited to what the Hawks are trying to accomplish, or at least what I think they’re trying to accomplish. And I will admit that using a third-pairing on a mediocre team at best is cherry-picking, But there are things to learn.

Take the fourth Oilers goal last night:

Manning makes a bad pass, which is not systematic. There’s a turnover at the blue line. Davidson, who’s already cheating to the middle before, is by far the closer to the play and cuts across. Because Manning was already backing up when passing and is somewhere near his left circle, the read should be his partner cutting across and Manning being something of a free-safety. Instead, much like Gallahad, Manning comes charging to where Davidson and a Hawks forward already are, leaving an entire side of the ice open. And because it’s Brandons EAT ARBY’S, they both get beat and it’s a 2-on-0.

Let’s move back to Wednesday:

Again, it’s Manning and Davidson. Manning wants to step up on Granlund before his own blue line, but his gap to start before the pass even heads to Granlund is too big. And because he’s slow and a clod, he gets turned trying to make it up too late, leaving Davidson with about two and a half guys to cover.

But it’s not just them. Take St. Louis’s second goal on Saturday:

Jokiharju goes chasing the puck and Ryan O’Reilly around and up to the boards, even though ROR is basically in the corner and can be easily “contained.” Keith is now on the right side of the net. If that’s where he’s supposed to be, then Alex DeBrincat has to be crashing down low to deal with Perron. Toews is late to cover for Jokiharju and Keith as they try and scramble, but he has about four different places to be. At the beginning, Toews was the one who seemed to think ROR was at least accounted for along the boards and isn’t expecting Jokiharju to come flying out there.

Now, this is easily the result of a teenager learning at the highest level, and mistakes you can live with. Except they’re happening multiple times a night to everyone. The amount of times the Hawks leave an entire side of the ice open per game is simply confounding. No one seems to have any idea what the other guy is going to do, and they hence end up doing everything and nothing at the same time. Communication seems to be somewhere around the level of whatever that shrieking was on the NBCSN broadcast last night

Before we start breaking glass to get our axes, these are changes that would take some time to bed in, but the clock is ticking. You’d have to think that if the Hawks still look this iffy and unsure at the end of this month, then real problems are going to need real solutions. But by that point, it may be too late.

It should also be noted that the Hawks most consistent defender from last year, Connor Murphy, is yet to play. But when you’re really depending on the return of a 6′ 5″ d-man with back problems now, who is also Connor Murphy–a fine player but nowhere near a great one– that makes a statement of its own.

Which makes the Hawks’ personnel decisions on their blue line the past couple years all the more strange. The perfect d-man for this souped-up system in their own zone of course is Michal Kempny. But I don’t want to litigate that whole thing again. The blue line is just another area where the disagreements between coach and GM and how they see how a roster should be built are clear. Stan Bowman liked Kempny, and brought him back for a second year even though he spent the first being spit on by Quenneville. But when that didn’t work, Stan has provided Q with Jan Rutta and Manning, which more and more seem like decisions with a “Fine, here are the fucking monoliths you prefer” tinge of attitude to them. And Q’s now running a defensive system based on what he thinks Stan wanted with the players he was stuck with.

That’s all just a theory, and not even all that likely. On the ground, what we know is that Stan tried to make the blue line more mobile last year with bringing back Kempny and swapping out Hjalmarsson for Murphy. And this year he’s made it less so by bringing back Rutta and bringing in Manning. They were forced into playing Jokiharju, who isn’t really all that quick either, just smart though learning the hard way.

At the end of the day, through their performance, decisions, changes, and whatever else, none of it really makes sense.

 

Everything Else

History Is Told By The Winners

By Sam Fels 2280 0

It’s not that it matters much, because it’s so far in the past. Doing revisionist stuff isn’t really healthy or prudent, but sometimes I can’t help it. And however it went down, the Blackhawks hiring of Joel Quenneville will go down as a seminal moment in Hawks history. It clearly could not have worked out better, no matter what our complaints and grievances have been along the way.

But I gotta tell ya, this “Oral History Of Quenneville’s Hiring” by Scott Powers is hilarious in parts. And that’s no fault of Scott’s, who is a friend and supporter of ours. He’s just recording what people said. What those people said though is just…oh my god, I can’t even.

Let’s go through some of it, shall we?

John McDonough, Blackhawks president: I can’t recall exactly, but I didn’t think we had a great camp. I don’t think I was alone in that thinking.

Right here, second quote of the article. I nearly fell off the couch reading this. Remember that when John McDonough was hired, which was less than a year before Savard’s firing and Q’s hiring, he made it clear he was not part of hockey operations. That wasn’t his duty or bag. He wanted you to know that. He would leave that to the hockey people.

So now all of the sudden he thinks the Hawks are having a bad camp? I mean, yeah, sure, he’s in the building and he’s watching practice and games I guess but…HOW THE FUCK WOULD HE KNOW?! What’s he comparing it to? He’d been in the job less than a year! What, did he do what he did for the Hawks game presentation and go around to every other team’s training camp and rip off what they were doing?

Again, this worked out incredibly well. But either McDonough is again trying to throw himself all over the credit for this hire, and/or he’s lying to you now or he was lying to you then. Or both! I just couldn’t let this one go.

Whenever something has gone right on the ice, McDonough does a reasonable impression of Usain Bolt to get in the way of any praise. This reminds me of the video of their second Cup win, when everyone is being interviewed about the 17 seconds. And McD is there to tell you the Bruins should have taken a timeout after Bickell’s goal. Oh, you think so, Toe McDonough? Your advanced hockey mind told you that?

Dale Tallon, Blackhawks general manager: It was kind of the end of the year and moving into the summer and into training camp, you hear things, and you develop and gather information and you go from there. It’s a day-to-day situation in our business. You’re only as good as your last game it seems.

You can see where Tallon knew he was fucked. Read between the lines here and what he’s saying is that McDonough and Rocky Wirtz hired Scotty Bowman as a consultant, because neither of them knew hockey from their ass, and essentially what Bowman told them was I can’t tell you what you’ve got on your roster until you’ve got a real coach running a real system, something Savard wasn’t and wasn’t doing. Oh and my son happens to be in the front office…

Remember that Tallon was also kind of forced to have Savard replace Trent Yawney. Savard was foisted upon SEVEN DIFFERENT COACHES as an assistant by Bill Wirtz. He was the pet project. When Tallon wanted to fire Yawney, Wirtz wasn’t about to pay two separate head coaches, so it was finally time to anoint Savvy. I’m not sure it was Tallon’s first choice, but it was his only choice. But it was yet another thing they could cuff to him when it came time to torpedo him a year later.

Brent Seabrook, Blackhawks defenseman: I remember playing like, I think Dunc (Duncan Keith), Soupy (Brian Campbell) and myself we all played 30 minutes a night the first three games and one of those was back to back. I remember being exhausted. So I don’t know if that was anything or what it was. It was probably nothing, probably just trying to win games.

You can see the problem. Also, under Savvy a lot of other teams thought the Hawks were horribly conditioned. You might recall a lot of blown leads the season before.

Stan Bowman, Blackhawks assistant general manager: The vibe that I remember was this didn’t have a feel like it was going to work in terms of Savy’s strengths as a coach, and I had known him for a long time because he had been with us for a while as an assistant coach. I just think sometimes your strength as an assistant doesn’t always translate over into being a strength of a head coach.

“I thought he was an idiot, so did everyone else, and I certainly wasn’t going to work with him when they gave me this job, which was going to be pretty soon.”

Bergevin: I said to him in the meantime, I said, “Joel, would you like to do some scouting?” He said, “I don’t want to travel, but I could watch games.” He loves hockey obviously, he loves watching games. I said, “That’s perfect. We have a kid in college, playing for CC (Colorado College), I believe, fast guy, I can’t remember his name, winger, left winger (Billy Sweatt).” He said, “I’ll watch some games in Colorado. If Dale wants that, I’ll just be like a part-time scout.”

I love this. They hired Joel Quenneville. To scout Bill Sweatt. Bill Sweatt. This is the story they’re giving you. They want you to believe this. Sidenote: Bill Sweatt just replaced the oil on your car.

Hmmm… I wonder what else might have happened in the fall of 2008 to keep the Hawks from making this move before the season started? What could it be? Just can’t put my finger on it…

To be fair, this arrest was already after camp had begun for the Hawks. So maybe this was the plan all along. But…come on. Look, the Hawks had a buzz, even after missing the playoffs the year before., Everyone around town knew big things were happening. And they were terrified of any bad buzz encroaching upon it. So maybe firing your coach who was the team’s most popular player for a decade and a half wasn’t something they had the total stomach for. Replacing him with someone who just had a DUI would have made it worse. They didn’t want anything to ruin the momentum.

But I’ll let you decide what you believe more.

Brent Sopel, Blackhawks defenseman: Having Joel on the staff, you knew something was going to happen at some point and time. You don’t bring Joel Quenneville, a guy who had been around the league and was known for what he had done all those years, you don’t put him on a staff. I felt at some point and time he was going to be the coach. When that was? Was that going to be in two weeks, two months, two years? But that was the feeling that I got.

Torchetti: I think we kind of got our ears up. I think everybody knew that.

Now here are two people giving you the straight dope.

McDonough: I think it was a combination of both. I think the decision that we were going to do this, this was imminent, but it helped that we felt we had somebody that would be a good fit. We did not plan on going the interim route, bringing somebody in as a temporary. We thought we had the right guy. I think history now says we do have the right guy and it’s worked out.

Don’t pull a muscle patting yourself on the back there, McD.

I mean, this tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it? We’re not going the interim route? You wouldn’t hire a guy you’re going to keep around for years on the fly. You would have done your research. This was the plan.

Rick Dudley: There’s a couple things I believe. I believed we all believed Savy could be successful in the National Hockey League. I believe Dale did. I believe all of us believed that.

How’s that working out?

None of this really matters. It worked out. It was the right move. And maybe one day, 10 years from now, we’ll get the real story and a bunch of other real stories about what really went down with this team. It’s just kind of amazing they’re still pushing the super polished version of events.

But hey, when you do what they’ve done, you get tell your story how you want it.

Everything Else

Strange Thoughts On This Nervous, Pre-Curtain Raiser Night

By Sam Fels 2042 0

This is our last night before the great circus begins. And maybe we can only hope for it be as entertaining as a circus. More likely, it’ll be just like when you realize how unhappy all the animals are in a circus and you kind of wish they’d go away forever or all just be like, Cirque de Soleil. A few thoughts before we dive headfirst into our normal coverage of the Hawks and the NHL tomorrow.

-I’ve been meaning to get this for a while now. If you haven’t seen Scott Powers’s “scouts breakdown” of every player on the Hawks, I encourage you to do so.

I think you’ll find the Brandon Saad section awfully interesting reading.

I’m not going to attempt to defend Brandon Saad. We’ve looked at the numbers, and made our peace. And yet the more I think about his last season, and reading these comments…boy, you can see it, can’t you? The trade looks awful now of course, but when it was made I don’t think many of us thought it would. When we last saw Artemi Panarin around here, he was floating around, waiting for Patrick Kane to hit his tape from the other wing. It was very Patrick Sharp. And you can still rack up a ton of points that way if you’re skilled, as Panarin is and Sharp was. And Kane will always find your tape. No one anticipated Panarin scoring 80+ points without Kane after that. Whoops.

But this has always been the knock on Saad. It’s nothing physical. If you were to design what a power left wing would look like, it would probably look like Saad. Unbelievably strong, quick on his skates, with plus offensive-skill and defensive awareness. The tools are there.

And yet…you can’t close your eyes and see him dominating that many shifts, like the way Marian Hossa did. You know what that looked like. You can still see it now in your mind (hopefully without the tears, but that’s hard to do). Can you see it with Saad? Or do you see a guy just being equal on his shifts, who gets his points really though natural gifts?

The part about playing with lesser players got me, too. Because my initial reaction was, “Well of course he’s going to fucking balk when stuck with SuckBag Johnson and David Kampf.” But that’s not what a player does, is it? This is where I want to say his first three years were spent playing with prime Toews and Hossa, and of course that’ll skew how you see linemates and teammates, It can’t really get better than that.

But that’s horseshit, isn’t it? You play with who’s out there. Not that I’m a fan of when this happens, but when Kane downed tools at times last year because he was playing on a dogshit team and at times with balloon-handed teammates, you could see where it was coming from. That didn’t make it right or excusable, but explainable? Yeah, just a touch.

But Saad doesn’t have that pedigree. Saad has proven to be an above-average NHLer, but nothing more. He flashes being a star at times, but they’re only flashes. He’ll look good with good players, but did he ever really stand above them for more than a handful of games here and there? He’ll play to the level of those around, it seems like.

And the thing is, the Hawks knew this about him. That’s why, though they may have been reluctant, they were willing to trade him when his contract demands got above what they deemed economical. Throughout his first three years here, there were whispers that some in the front office just didn’t think he had “it.” “It” being the determination to fight through defenders every shift and every night to become, essentially, Max Pacioretty. And physically, Saad could be near Patches or Blake Wheeler. If he wanted. But some in the Hawks organization doubted he wanted.

So I’m not sure what changed in the two years before they brought him back. Did their scouts see something in Ohio? If they did, the Jackets’ sure didn’t. And this could lead into another discussion about the Hawks borderline-woeful pro scouting.

This is a huge year for Saad, whatever the Hawks do as a whole. Not in terms of his future, because he’s cashing $6 million for the next three years regardless. But is he going to finally stand up and take games by the collar? Because he can, and I don’t think anyone doubts that. The Hawks certainly need it. Or is he content with that check and his 55 points? Does he care what people think about the latter? Do his teammates think that? This will be worth watching all season.

-With the pieces about to move, my biggest fear about the Hawks is that even after being skated out of the building a lot of nights last year, they’re still slow. That’s how it looked in the preseason, though some of that could be the veterans simply not caring. But then again, the veterans are the ones who are slow.

My fear is that the front office and their scouts haven’t redefined what fast is to them. The Hawks used to be one of the fastest team in the league. But thanks to their success, that threshold changed. Teams got as fast and then faster than what the Hawks were to beat them. I wonder if the Hawks aren’t still working at the same standard.

Because they told us Dylan Sikura’s size wasn’t a problem because of his quickness. But he doesn’t look all that quick in this league. They told us that Victor Ejdsell’s skating would be just enough to find space in this league. They’re both in Rockford, and that could change but you wonder. When he was healthy, did Gustav Forsling really look like he had game-breaking speed to you? Or did he look like he would be fast on a 2012 team?

I think this is changing, because Boqvist and Beaudin and Jokiharju do skate at 2018 levels of speed. But that won’t help much now. The jury is very much out on Dominik Kahun and Luke Johnson (“SuckBag” to his friends), who are here because of the Hawks claims about their speed.

Anyway, whatever it’s going to be, let’s kick this pig.

 

Everything Else

How Many Fucking Brandons Do We Need?

By Sam Fels 1969 0

God we’re going to use that picture a lot.

I’m probably going to disappoint you here, because my energy to rant and rave got up and went. My borderline-dread of what this season very well may be has kind of robbed me of the vigor to go nuclear at the lowest-level signing of Brandon Davidson.

Because the thing is…Brandon Davidson is fine. He’s fine if he’s in your #5-7 rotation. Yes, he played for three teams last year. And players who play for three teams in a season suck. That’s just the nature of the thing. Yes, he played for three teams with terrible defenses and moreover two of those teams don’t really know how to coach or develop any d-men. I don’t know what to make of Claude Julien anymore, so I’ll reserve judgement on that.

Davidson doesn’t score much, but his underlying numbers have always been good with the roles he’s been given. He’s honestly not going to kill you. But if there’s room for him on your blue line, your blue line probably blows.

What Davidson’s signing should have been is the one instead of Brandon Manning. Because they’re essentially the same thing, though Davidson probably has a little more dash to his game, whatever kind of claim that is. They’re both left-sided, third-pairing guys that you hope you don’t even notice really. The fact that the Hawks found room for both of them is a pretty huge indictment of what they are right now.

The Hawks are spending nearly $3 million this season to get two versions of the same thing. They could have had one of them for nothing, as that’s what Davidson is getting. There’s really only one slot for both, I guess, behind Keith and Gustafsson who take the other left-sided spots. And if one of them overtakes Gustafsson, that means things are worse than we thought and Goose is never going to be anything and you’d be better off watching porn than this team (probably always true, though).

None of this solves anything, which is the gaping holes on the top four. And they’ve been there FOR YEARS. They were there the minute Johnny Oduya sauntered off to Texas after the third parade. And the Hawks have done nothing, NOTHING, to fix it. Their pro scouting continues to let them down, or their internal budget does. It’s why we’ve seen confused clowns like Rob Scuderi, Jordan Oesterle, Christian Ehrhoff, Trevor Daley, David Rundblad, TVR, Darko Svedberg, the corpse of Michal Rozsvial or the corpse of Oduya’s second term, while somehow Michal Kempny wasn’t used and then went on to just anchor a second-pairing on a Cup winner. Also, if you read that entire list you will now die of dysentery in the next four years. Sorry.

That’s not to say Stan Bowman can’t recognize any d-man, because it’s generally agreed that Adam Boqvist and Henri Jokiharju are going to be difference-makers. Ian Mitchell may be as well. But all of that is two years away at a minimum.

The Hawks actually had cap space to address this. They could have addressed it in the past. Their answer was Brandon Manning, whom they just duplicated for a quarter of the cost. And the defense is the biggest reason this team is almost certainly going to suck and no one will be paying attention to it by Christmas. The forward corps isn’t great, but with a good blue line and a healthy Crawford (or any goalie who isn’t Cam Ward and could be competent) the Hawks would threaten the playoffs at worst. This one is probably going to get its head kicked in by any team with a collection of speed, which these days is just about all of them except like, the Islanders. And you only play them twice.

This is what happens when you have to use your movable pieces to help get things off the roster instead of put things on. I could trace this back to trading Patrick Sharp a year too late, or having to move Stephen Johns to get Sharp off the roster (not that Johns saves this, but he’s an NHL-quality d-man who at the very least could have netted something in return if he wasn’t used as Sharp sweetener. Insert your joke about all the places “Sharp Sweetener” went in Chicago here, just like he did). Or Teuvo, who most certainly could have gotten you a young, serviceable d-man in return if he didn’t have to be lashed to Bickell.

But that’s getting to be the longest book written, next to “Why No One Goes To Comiskey.” The problem isn’t Davidson. The problem is that there’s room for him at all.

Everything Else

My Realization, Q’s Realization, And All Seven And We’ll Watch Them Fall

By Sam Fels 2089 0

Halfway through the preseason, and it’s taken me that and months–perhaps even a year or more–to realize what bothers me so much about whatever “the plan,” the Hawks have here. What can I say? I’m a slow learner, runner, and just about everything else.

Perhaps it’s the surprise at just how little buzz I or anyone else feels just more than a week out from the season starting. From Crawford’s injury to the lack of activity over the summer that would rise above a beer belch, to Connor Murphy’s injury and whatever else, it seems the only thoughts we give the Hawks right now are which tickets we’re going to sell and just how bad they might be. It’s not exactly greeting the season with glee and a hug.

And this weekend, I finally figured out why, at least for myself. All summer, and really last year as well when the Hawks failed to do anything to improve their lot in life (which would have been folly anyway), the line from Madison St. was that the Hawks wanted to keep their powder dry because they had to sign Nick Schmaltz and Alex DeBrincat to long-term extensions and there were other kids they were excited about.

And I started to play that out in my head. And I’m sure next summer sees both of those players get their new contracts. And this season we’ll find out whatever Henri Jokiharju is, maybe. Adam Boqvist has already shown what he could possibly do. There’s Ian Mitchell at Denver. And I guess I get it.

But locking in all those players just locks in the team already have. And that team is already not good enough to do anything anyone’s going to write poetry about. The Hawks are basically holding out to keep this team that will barely scratch out a playoff place if everything goes right. They’re afraid of breaking THAT team up, not the one that actually did do things people wrote things about in a lyrical fashion, because it’s already gone. And I’m not convinced they know the difference.

Because as much as we love Schmaltz and Top Cat, they’re probably second-line players. Maybe Top Cat maxes out as a top-line winger. Maybe if Schmaltz absolutely balls out he’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. But as we’ve seen with RNH, he’s a #2 center on a team that wants to do anything of note.

Maybe two years down the line Jokiharju, Mitchell, and Boqvist have completely transformed the blue line, and maybe that’s good enough to make up for the forward corps deficiencies. Maybe. But how big are those deficiencies when Toews is 34 and Kane is 33? What is Keith at that point?

Nowhere in the pipeline is a true #1 center. We don’t even really know if there’s a #1 defenseman, though at least they can hope on a couple guys. You can’t win without those things. Maybe Collin Delia is a future #1 goalie? How many years is that away?

You can get those types of players through any fashion, of course. The Hawks likely won’t be able to draft one because they’ll never be bad enough to really be in the running for a top-three pick unless the bottom falls out in a way we can’t predict or the balls bounce in a freakish (read: rigged) way. They don’t have the mustard to trade for one, or so it seems.

But there were two franchise-turning players available this summer. The Hawks wouldn’t even put themselves in the room with them. Or maybe they couldn’t. They sure seemed to want everyone to know they weren’t after John Tavares or Erik Karlsson. How often do those types of players become available as the finished product? Why would you not at least attempt to see what it would take? Why would you choose the unknown over the known?

Look at the Bears and Khalil Mack. He’s the finished article. There are no questions. When a generational talent is out there, you go get him. Suddenly, the Sharks are West favorites. Worry about your “possibles” tomorrow. Today is for “definites.” What’s the plan for the Hawks to get those types of players? Is it bottoming out? Sure doesn’t seem like it. It’s not signing one, clearly. It’s not trading for one, clearly. So what’s the plan?

Right now it looks like the Hawks have a plan to build a team that’s a 6th-seed at best for a few years. Boy that’s exciting.

-When Q first started hinting that he was not ruling out Boqvist making the team straight-up, because I’m a cynical sort I thought it was just another thumbed-nose at his GM Stan Bowman. He’s done it before. “Oh, Stan wants this young d-man in Jokiharju to make the team so I’m gonna choose another one BECAUSE I’M JUST THAT SMART.”

But the more I thought it over, the more I want to think that Quenneville just sees the way the league is going and how teams are going to have to be built. We’re not far away from the stay-at-home, conservative blue-liner going the way of Gimbels. Some point soon, teams are just going to dress six or seven d-men who can all move and all play with the puck and make their teams play faster. It’s the only way to counter more and more forward groups that are entirely made up of racing bikes.

I’d like to think Q knows this, and I’d like to think he knows that he really only has Gustafsson and Keith on a good day who can do that. There’s always room for more speed, and whatever the big problems Boqvist might have at the top level he can move and he can play with the puck. He can get the Hawks out of trouble himself. And they need more of it, wherever they can get it and whatever form it comes in.

Which is one reason I’d like to see the Hawks dress seven d-men most nights. First off, they don’t have 12 forwards. Andreas Martinsen or John Hayden or David Kampf or Matthew Highmore will be flanking Marcus Kruger, and no one’s going to give a flying fornication if they only have to use one of them. Meanwhile, when Murphy returns healthy it opens up a spot for another d-man, and while it’s not saying much they’re at least of higher quality than whatever is pretending to be a fourth-line winger right now.

It provides more shelter for Jokiharju. It gives you more flexibility to go offensive or defensive when the situation calls.

The real point is that extra forward spot can be used to give any of Saad, Kane, Top Cat, Schmaltz, Sikura, an extra few shifts per game. Even Toews with Kruger playing wing for a spot. It’s akin to batting your best hitter 2nd. Over a full season that extra ABs add up. Those extra shifts would add up. And really, games and standings can be decided on a handful of goals here or there. Why wouldn’t you give your best players more chances to get them? An extra two or three shifts a night isn’t going to paralyze anyone for a season.

This won’t happen of course, because the Hawks dressed seven d-men once last year and they gave up a touchdown to the Devils. But the case is right there for it.

Everything Else

Blackhawks Open Camp, Are Covered In Puke Within 10 Minutes

By Sam Fels 3305 0

People, as I’ve shared in the past, I used to be a comedian. And never, in my seven to eight years of dedicating my life to trying to write stuff to make people laugh, did I ever come anywhere close to anything as absurd and uproarious as the opening hour of Blackhawks training camp this morning. Yes, I use the featured photo a lot, but you sum it up better than that!

Where to even fucking start? So yesterday, company and television stooge Pat Boyle “reported” that Corey Crawford would hit the ice today. He didn’t say in what capacity, if he was just going to check that he in fact can still skate at all, or would be just touching up the logos painted under the surface. This was clearly the Hawks attempt at…

So Crow did actually hit the ice, and he did actually practice…just by himself. Which is…something? I mean it’s better than nothing. It’s on the road to full participation, it’s just that no one has any idea how long that road is. But hey, he’s alive and he’s wearing gear and that’s like, a step forward from where we’ve been. Maybe. Unless he disappears again tomorrow and/or this was all for show. Good stuff, really.

Oh, but it gets so much better.

Right about the time the Hawks were hitting the ice as a team, it was announced that Connor Murphy is going to miss two months with a back injury. TWO MONTHS. BACK INJURY. Let’s try and unpack this all, because it’s a fucking ton and ain’t none of it good.

So, this summer, Stan Bowman hoarded all of his “assets,” such as they are, and decided against upgrading a blue line that was rat semen anyway, because the Hawks are terrified of what they have to pay Nick Schmaltz and Alex DeBrincat in the next two years (no really, that’s the reason). Except there’s no fucking chance Murphy showed up today and said, “Hey I think my back is fucked up.” For it to be a two month thing, they have to have known about it for a while, and still elected to present you with Brandon Manning and Jan Rutta. TICKETS TO THE HOME OPENER STILL AVAILABLE, PEOPLE!

So essentially, what the Hawks are telling you while hoping you don’t notice their lips are moving, is that they know they’re going to be a dungheap this season. Because if you thought you had a chance at being anything, you wouldn’t just toss your hands up at the news that your most consistent d-man of last year was going to be out until December basically, yelling, “Dems da breaks!”

Going further, you wouldn’t do that if your thought your team has any hope of being anything other than a representation of sadness and confusion in watercolor because back injuries of this significance to a player who is, y’know, 6-FOOT-FUCKING-5, have a tendency to be career-altering, if not debilitating. That’s a major, major problem that the Hawks thought they could just sneak by you.

Oh, and Brent Seabrook is going to miss a week with an “abdominal injury,” which simply just has to be a really unruly burrito.

The capper of course is that at the first practice Chris Kunitz was skating with Jonathan Toews and Alex DeBrincat, which couldn’t be a more Quenneville moment unless it came with a bottle of wine, a Whalers jersey, and a mustache painted on the ice. TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE

If there’s a silver lining to all of this, and there isn’t, basically Quenneville is going to be forced into giving Henri Jokiharju a long look because there ain’t shit on shit else. And he was already skating with Keith today, so fuck it, let’s ride that snake as far as it’ll go and figure out the rest later. Or never. Probably never.

So just to review, when the Hawks open the season, your pairings could be a declining Keith with a 19-year-old the coach will hate, Sbarro and Jan Rutta, and The Guy Worse Than Radko Gudas next to Cowboy Gustafsson.

Everything Else

Their Emblems Built Of Garbage – ’18–’19 Blackhawks Player Previews – Corey Crawford

By John Pullega 2835 0

Today is the first day in our monthlong look at what the ‘18–’19 Men of Four Feathers have to offer. We’ll give you a review of each player, a best-case scenario, a worst-case scenario, and a prediction. The style’s new but the face is the same. Let’s kick this pig into life, after the first missed playoffs in a decade. We hope you enjoy.

In times of doubt and sorrow, there are always coping mechanisms. Wild Turkey 101. Watching The Crow on a loop. Asking strangers to put on a clown mask and open-hand slap you until you feel something, anything. And with the organ-I-zation’s handling of Corey Crawford’s status since last year, we might have a chance to experience all three at once this year.

2017–18 Stats

28 GP – 16 W, 9 L, 2 OTL

.929 SV%, 2.27 GAA

.935 EV, .931 PP, .902 SH

30 SA/Game

A Brief History: Last year, we had a chance to test McClure’s theory that the Hawks will live or die by Corey Crawford. And boy, did we find out. Prior to Evgeni Malkin catapulting himself into Corey like the bag of over-ripe compost and chewed-off thumbnails he is, and Crawford’s subsequent December dizzies in New Jersey, Crow was on his way to having the best year of his career.

– His even-strength SV% of .935 and short-handed SV% of .902 at the time of his demise eclipsed his final stats from his Jennings-winning year in 2013 (.934, .895), in about the same number of games (28 vs. 30) and with a less talented team in front of him.

– His overall SV% of .929 was the best of his career to that point.

– His GAA of 2.27 was tied for third-best of his career—behind only a 2.26 in 2013–14 and a comical 1.94 in 2013.

He managed these numbers despite facing 30 shots per game, as Joel Quenneville regaled us with his yearlong “I can touch my asshole with my elbow” strategy of pairing piss and poutine on his blue line in front of Crow. It may be folly to assume he could have maintained all of those numbers, but it’s clear that Corey was putting together a Vezina-contending year before he got shelved.

Before his unexplained 30-week absence, the Hawks sat at a disappointing but still-in-contention 39 points through 35 games. In those 35 games, they only lost more than three in a row once, losing five in a row at the end of November/beginning of December, four of which Forsberg started. They proceeded to post 37 points over the next 47 games—including losing streaks of four games, five games, and eight games—without Crow in net.

While there are several reasons why this happened, none loom as large as losing Crawford.

It Was the Best of Times: Going forward, best-case scenario, Crawford rises from the grave and doesn’t miss a beat. He plays his usual 55-game, 3,300-minute year at a .920+ clip, bailing out the defensively declined likes of Erik Gustafsson and Brent Seabrook, giving Jokiharju a chance to take risks, and preventing teamwide deflations from the kinds of backbreaking goals Forsberg and Berube were so primed to allow. This lets Cam Ward channel his 2005 essence in relief, and we all go back to gushing about how the Hawks know how to pick backup goalies. Assuming that guys like Saad and Toews rebound; Sikura, DeBrincat, and Schmaltz continue to grow into Top Sixers (I’m banking on both happening); and Quenneville puts down his fucking copy of House of Leaves before he pairs his defensemen, having Crawford back makes this a playoff team.

And since we’re doing best-case scenarios, let’s go even farther. Crawford finishes as a Vezina finalist behind Jonathan Quick or some other such horseshit because the NHL drinks from the piss troughs at Wrigley before they give out awards. Pat Foley finds time in between chugging Night Train and giggling at his own jokes to heap praise on Crawford like an incel at a sex doll brothel. Eddie O. openly admits that Crawford is the best goaltender the Hawks have had since Tony O. The Hawks team up with Taco Bell to give away free cheesy gordida crunches for every Crawford shutout, and we all get 10 free cheesy gordida crunches.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Crawford disappears from hockey completely. Like a scorned lover, StanBo and Q answer all “Do you have a timeline on Crawford?” questions with a dead-eyed “Cam Ward is our goaltender.” The narrative turns to “He told us he’d be ready, but now he refuses to skate for us.” Cam Ward tosses a .870 SV% on the year, and the Hawks finish dead last in the league. Edmonton wins the draft lottery, and the Hawks name Bobby Hull as the GM. The Hawks trade Crawford and DeBrincat for Patrick Marleau and Jake Gardiner, and sign Roman Polak to a 1-year deal. Everyone eats Arby’s as we wait for the Yellowstone Caldera to explode and finally end the fucking madness.

Prediction: Because I take Crawford’s word over StanBo’s or Q’s expectations, I suspect we will start the year without Crawford between the pipes. Crawford misses the first 10 games, but comes back and posts a tidy career average .919 SV% and 2.37 GAA on the year. He drags the Hawks into the last playoff spot by himself and still has his GRIT N’ HEART questioned by people who unironically wish Scott Foster were the starting goaltender. His brilliance goes underappreciated all year, but it doesn’t matter because the Hawks squeak back into the playoffs.

It can’t rain all the time.

Everything Else

A Restless Fourth Estate

By Sam Fels 2967 0

One day soon, I’d love to see Stan Bowman say he’s going to meet with the media and no one show up. I think both sides would probably be happier that way. He never says anything, so the media doesn’t get much to write about. And he clearly doesn’t enjoy talking to them. This is a loveless marriage where they just show up to see their talentless kid’s recital and spend the whole thing loudly exhaling, wondering how things turned out this way.

So after Day 2 of Prospects Camp, Bowman met the media yesterday and said nothing. Yes, the Hawks have more cap space, but he may or may not use it. He may be looking for another d-man, but he may not be. They may add to the team, but he might not as well. Maybe, maybe not, maybe fuck yourself. This is basically all you get from Stan ever.

And clearly some of the beats are getting a little agitated, though you can see the frustration. There’s only so many words you’re going to get out of Cam Ward, Brandon Manning, and Chris Kunitz, and all the people yelling at you on Twitter don’t know who those people are anyway. So you get this from Mark Lazerus. Or this from Scott Powers. Or maybe this from the irredeemably handsome Jay Zawaski.

And all of it seems to suggest that the Hawks don’t have a direction, or a plan, or if they do they’re not saying anything. And we’ll never know because they won’t say anything ever.

But here’s the thing, and we’ve been over this before, there’s really no reason for them to.

I know we live in a town where both baseball teams have now been as transparent as can be, and it would be awesome to be in a world where every team does that. But when you’re about to embark on a full blown tear-down and rebuild, it’s easy to be transparent. Both the Cubs and Sox had been utterly useless for years before they decided to blow it all up. It was obvious what they had to do. Everyone knew it. Once you trade one aging star with an expiring contract, even if you haven’t said anything the cat’s out of the bag and it’s clear the rest will go.

And you’re prepping your fanbase that way. You’re saying it’s going to be rough, please stick with us and keep buying tickets and we promise it’ll pay off. Chances are you’ve already stopped selling as many tickets, or any in the Sox case, and you’re basically just trying to cauterize that  wound.

The Hawks aren’t in the same place. They’re not doing a full rebuild, and we’ve been over why they can’t. It really wouldn’t do Stan any good to say to the assembled media, “Well I’m going home every night and lighting a candle in my Justin Faulk shrine and then doing a seance hoping to force  Don Waddell to fall down and hit his head on a fire hydrant on the way to work and gives me him and Skinner for Artem Anisimov and the Other Sikura.” (side note: Waddell might be this dumb anyway but we’ll find out) While those on the inside know what the Hawks are looking for, publicly declaring it only erodes leverage.

Secondly, at least not yet, the Hawks haven’t stopped selling tickets. The TV numbers might be down, but the tickets haven’t gone that way. Yet. While they may have done some padding to keep their beloved sellout streak alive, they’re still at or near capacity every night. But it’s a fragile hold. Declaring “we’re gonna be THE SUCK for a bit while we groom these kids” is going to erode that unstable foundation of fans in a hurry. The Hawks might get there anyway by New Year’s Day if they start at .500 again or worse, but they have to salvage what they can.

Thirdly, Stan can’t declare that he isn’t satisfied with his roster because what does that tell the players who show up at camp right now? What’s that motivational speech on the first day? “Well guys, here we are, I wanted to add to this misshapen dreck but couldn’t and I really don’t think you’re going to the playoffs unless God miracles your ass there, so now give us everything you got!”

Honestly, I don’t think the veterans on this team are stupid enough to not see what’s going on here, but they don’t want their GM shitting on it, too.

I don’t want to be seen to be a staunch Stan defender, though I am a defender. He’s made his mistakes, and lord knows we’ve cataloged all of them here repeatedly. But when it comes to this, even though he’s bad at talking, I don’t really know what he’s supposed to say. If he comes right out and says, “We’re looking for another d-man because our blue line currently resembles upchucked Fruit Loops, but for the right price,” and then doesn’t get one, he still gets pilloried. It looks like he’s afraid to pull the trigger.

The other problem for Stan is that when you’re a mediocre team, you have no strength to trade from. What’s the surplus on the Hawks right now? It’s not d-men. It’s not centers. It may have been shifty, fast forwards who might be middle six guys but they just traded the one they had to lose to also lose Hossa’s contract. They can’t lose Schmaltz. They can’t lose DeBrincat. They can’t really lose Saad unless it’s a knockout deal, because that would just be running in place. Now, that erosion of a reservoir of talent is on Stan, at least to a point. This again, is where losing Johns and Teuvo for literally nothing is so detrimental, Because now you don’t have anything to trade for what you need. I’d throw Danault on the list, but he was at least flogged for what the Hawks thought would be something. If you had those three players now and not enough spots to go around, you best believe you could put a package together for Faulk or even Karlsson.

That’s the problem for NHL GMs. While they’re overwhelmingly made up of morons, nincompoops, and ignoramuses (ignorami?), they have no margin for error. There’s only two trades in there that Stan had to make to lose a contract, and now he has no flexibility. So I don’t know what good talking about it would do.

Everything Else

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

By Sam Fels 3009 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.