I was (and still am) a Dale Tallon fan. And anyone who goes around saying that Stan Bowman won 3 Stanley Cups not only does Tallon (and to a degree Mike Smith and Rick Dudley) a huge disservice, but they sound pretty stupid when they say it.

I have also tried, especially the last 2-3 years, to give Bowman the benefit of the doubt, and credit when it’s due. But the fact is, in terms of his hockey career, Stan Bowman was born on third base. Twice.

First, as the son of a legendary coach and not so legendary GM, the second in inheriting arguably the best collection of young talent in the NHL of the previous 25 years when he took over the Blackhawks GM responsibilities in 2009.

All that said, I was also a Kenny Williams fan when he was GM of the White Sox. But, as a friend of mine who knows a thing or two about baseball told me after the Sox won the World Series in 2005, Kenny Williams became a good GM through on the job training in the position. Which is a fair point.

And I felt like Bowman could do the same.

Again, you really need to go back and look at the rosters of all three Cup teams before you lay foundational, primary credit for any of them at Bowman’s feet. It was Smith and Dudley (and especially Marshall Johnston) who unearthed a fat biracial kid from Northern Minnesota who became the one-man wrecking crew known as Dustin Byfuglien.

And it was Smith who drafted Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Corey Crawford in two short years.

Tallon was the guy who, along with Rocky Wirtz’ brother Peter, bit the bullet and did the total teardown and rebuild from 2004-2007 that ultimately resulted in Dave Bolland, Bryan Bickell, Patrick Sharp, Troy Brouwer, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Jonathan Toews, Andrew Ladd, Bryan Campbell and Patrick Kane joining the franchise.

But you can argue that Bowman did a good enough job maintaining the core and filling in around the edges over the next 5+ years after 2009. And you could hope that he was learning as he went. As I did.

The high point of the Bowman era was probably 2015, when not only did the Hawks win their 3^rd Cup in 6 years, but the team threw out some big contracts, most notably to Artem Anisimov and Brent Seabrook. Kane and Toews were eventually both paid a million more dollars a year than Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. And everybody got lengthy no-movement clauses.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the Hawks’ 4^th Cup in the decade.

Pfffffffffffffft.

Since then, the Hawks have made the playoffs twice, only to be eliminated in round 1, and in the last three years (including likely this season), not at all. All this while paying Kane, Toews, Seabrook, Keith, Crawford and Saad combined nearly $45 million a year.

Suddenly, all of Bowman’s fill in around the edges moves stopped working. Then, they failed year after year. Every year has promised a new youth movement, with most failing miserably.

Nearly all of Bowman’s first round draft picks since 2010 are either playing with other teams, or in the case of Mark McNeill (2011), not even in the NHL. Ryan Hartman (2013) may be soon to follow.

Sure, Bowman has had his wins, like grabbing Alex DeBrincat in the 2^nd round in 2016. Yet the lustre is fading even from that move as DeBrincat is struggling through an off year (at best). And I’m probably in the minority of those who think Bowman made a wise move in trading Artemi Panarin for Saad. Because after all, despite all the meatballs and interwebz experts out there who said otherwise, Panarin was never re-signing in Chicago in 2019.

In the end, it’s fair to say, this front office generally handled success very well but has not handled adversity well at all. Bowman is a maintainer, a numbers guy, not a scout or a builder. McDonough and his flunkies can’t seem to get out of the way.

After a bad start last season, Hall of Fame coach Joel Quenneville was relieved of his duties—only to be “replaced” by a career minor league coach who is younger than some of his veteran players. Has it worked? No.

Yet Bowman and McDonough, the two men largely responsible for giving Seabrook a nearly $7 million per year extension to the next millennium, with a hard no-movement clause for all but the last two years, for trading Niklas Hjalmarsson for Connor Murphy, for re-acquiring every washed up ex-Hawk under the sun year after year with predictably miserable results, for proclaiming Dylan Sikura the team’s “big trade deadline acquisition” in 2018, still have jobs.

When Quenneville was fired, a stern-faced McDonough declared to the media: “we’re all accountable. I’m accountable.”

Really? Then Rockwell Wirtz, it is time you hold Mr. McDonough accountable.

Where am I going with all this? Like I said, Bowman started his tenure as GM not only on third base, but halfway to home. That he scored three times is not so remarkable.

Setting aside the marvelous collection of talent he inherited and rode to success over a 5-6 year span, his misses have outnumbered his hits.

And since McDonough hired Bowman—after firing a very popular and successful GM in order to do so—he is just as, if not more so responsible for this mess. Let’s be clear on this: you can’t tease Bowman out from McDonough, as McDonough fired Tallon and hired Bowman in order to give himself and others in the front office more visibility into hockey decisions. He as much as said so at the time.

But the ever-optimistic Hawk fan will point to the last two drafts, of Adam Boqvist and Kirby Dach, as proof that prosperity is just around the corner.

Yet even there, we can find a possible fly in the ointment. Boqvist appears to be emerging into a really nice player, but the Hawks may have passed on an even better all around, big, mobile defenseman in the Seth Jones mold, when they let Noah Dobson slide to the Islanders in 2018.

Perhaps recognizing his error, Bowman even publicly acknowledged that his team had become too small and too soft for the playoffs after taking Dach in 2019.

But that begs a very important question that no one has really asked yet.

After years of drafting tiny, soft players in the draft’s higher rounds, why did it take Bowman, of ALL people, so long to finally see that hockey was still a contact sport, that the Erik Gustafssons of the world never do anything but hurt their teams in big, physical matchups?

The truth is, and the evidence proves, this is an organization navigating without a roadmap.

They’re not contending and they’re not really rebuilding. They’re not big or physical up and down the ice. And they’re not overly skilled past Kane and Toews. They’ve overcommitted on big money long term contracts to aging players. Their pipeline is nearly bereft of meaningful prospects.

Wednesday, it was rumored that the goalie they signed to possibly replace Crawford (Robin Lehner, who has shown himself to be more than up to the task) will be traded in the next couple of weeks because the team “can’t afford him.” And the 35 year-old oft-concussed Crawford will be extended. Remember, this team has $11 million invested in the goalie position this year—and they can’t afford to sign Lehner for next season and beyond—after he has made clear he would like to be in Chicago? What?

It’s time to face facts: Bowman and McDonough have been caught with their pants down, even though most of us would rather look the other way.

We can sit here and debate til the cows come home if the team should really go all in on a rebuild and trade away the remaining cornerstones of the Cup years for the high picks and elite prospects it takes to rebuild on, or if Chicago should continue to try to “soft rebuild” around Kane and Toews.

But, can there really be any debate that this front office has failed fairly spectacularly over the last few seasons—and there seems to be no end in sight?

So whatever direction the franchise ultimately chooses, there should be some new hockey minds (who aren’t defending five years of mediocrity and have no sacred cows) executing an actual plan.

But try this—if you want to know how caught up (and poorly served) Hawk fans are with all this nonsense about their great corporate front office being “on it.” Ask yourself if today you would switch places with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Most Hawk fans, I suspect, would say “no way.” Without realizing that even after losing the “great Breadman” and Sergei Bobrovsky (and replacing him with some dude named Merzlikins), even after a raft of injuries to their remaining good players, the Blue Jackets are at present, 30-17-10 and the top wildcard in the (much better) Eastern Conference.

Why?

Because they have an excellent, experienced coach.

They have a rock solid GM from a scouting background.

And the team works together, flawlessly, from the end of the bench all the way up through the executive suite. They’re big, they play hard every night, and they win maybe more games than their talent justifies. And they’ll make the playoffs again this year.

All things you can’t say about Stan Bowman and John McDonough’s Blackhawks.

Your move, Rocky.

The post Analysis: Hawks need a roadmap and better leaders (Bowman and McDonough must go) appeared first on The Rink.

There are many schools of thought on this, and most are (at least partly) valid.

Blackhawks fans have been extremely fortunate and certainly need to take that into account. Outside of the 90s Bulls, this has been the most successful era for a Chicago sports franchise, IN HISTORY. Most teams would gladly trade with the Blackhawks to have three cup wins in less than a decade.

All that success ended in the spring of 2016, though, when the Blackhawks were swept by the Nashville Predators after amassing one of the best regular season records in the team’s history. They have gone steadily downhill and most of their moves have been washes, at best. To compound the issue, the front office continues to blatantly lie and deny.

That brings me to my little theme. After listening to The Fixx’s “One Thing Leads to Another” on the radio, it struck me that the lyrics could be plugged into the State of the Blackhawks organization so, without further ado…

The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say?
You’ve got a blank face, which irritates
Communicate, pull out your party piece
You see dimensions in two
State your case with black or white
But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth
You run for cover so discreet, why don’t they…

Last spring, when the Blackhawks brass trotted out in front of the media, team president John McDonough told the media and the fan base that they stood behind Stan Bowman and Joel Quenneville, but proclaimed that everyone would be held accountable for missing the playoffs. Bowman then followed up with his (now famous) #WeLikeOurTeam.

On the surface, Stan Bowman certainly looked like he believed their dull lifeless #WeLikeOurTeam mantra. It was almost like he was taken into a back room, hypnotized and told that his first response to every question would now be #WeLikeOurTeam.

They conveniently forgot to mention that by “standing behind” Joel Quenneville they were waiting to stab him in the back after 15 games and use him as the fall guy.

Not only that, but he handed the team over to a very raw head coach that probably wasn’t ready to be an NHL coach.  I have said it several times before, Bowman pulled the pin out of a grenade and dropped it in Colliton’s lap.  Much like they have done with several young prospects.

We will get to that later, though.

Just prior to the NHL draft, Bowman did absolutely nothing to put the organization into position to improve. The Blackhawks held the 8th overall pick and Nashville’s 27th overall pick (thanks to the dumping of Ryan Hartman). There were quite a few high end forwards at the top, and some potential generational defensemen that the organization could have moved up to pick. They stuck to their position and made their picks.

No trades; nothing.

When their number was called at the draft, the organization took a gamble with smallish project Adam Boqvist. If they were happy with Boqvist (and by all accounts they were), Bowman could have potentially packaged up the 27th pick to unload a big contract and clear up some cap room for the pending free agent period.

They didn’t accomplish that either and picked Nicolas Beaudin. This is all fine and well, but do the Blackhawks really need half a dozen clones? Apparently they were swallowing that #WeLikeOurTeam charade, themselves, which has proven to be a huge mistake.

As training camp opened, the only moves they made were to bring in an over-the-hill forward in Chris Kunitz, an over-the-hill goalie in Cam Ward, and a pair of third pair defensemen in Brandon Manning and Brandon Davidson. If they truly believed in this team, they are awful at their jobs because just about everyone with a set of eyes knew this team had huge holes to fill.

Do what they say, say what you mean, and baby
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long but then
One thing leads to another

Are the Chicago Blackhawks in a full rebuild? Label it however you would like, but this transition they are in the middle of is a rebuild. Not “rebuilding on the fly.” Not “reloading.”

Full blown rebuild.

Stop lying and treating the fans like a bunch of shaved chimps. Enough is enough. John McDonough treats the fans like it is 1995 before most had readily available access to the internet. When the team could just shovel loads of nonsense to the beat writers and the fans were forced to consume it. It is almost 2019 and fans have more information at the tips of their fingers than libraries of books and newspapers. Independent websites and media outlets (like this one) have a voice to point out the nonsense.

The excuse of “Well, what else are they supposed to say?” simply is not valid. It is a lazy cop out response. Several sports franchises have been open and honest with their fans about the necessity to rebuild. SEVERAL!

Fans bought in and, in most situations, the teams came out of the other end of the meat grinder and had success. THAT is what the “public relations genius” John McDonough should be saying. All he has to do is look at his former employer across the city to see how that works.

While the outrage is somewhat misdirected, a prime example is the way the team handled the firing of Joel Quenneville. Fans realized that the Quenneville was the sacrificial lamb and the results since then support that. What we’re seeing is a fan base backlash against Bowman.

While he certainly has his hand in this mess, Stan Bowman is a John McDonough “yes man.” Firing Bowman will not change much of what is going on at 1901 W. Madison. McDonough will just hire another obedient muppet that he can smear his fingerprints all over. This back office needs a full extermination.

The impression that you sell
Passes in and out like a scent
But the long face that you see comes from living close to your fears
If this is up then I’m up but you’re running out of sight
You’ve seen your name on the walls
And when one little bump leads to shock miss a beat
You run for cover and there’s heat, why don’t they

The contract issues started as far back as the signings of Marian Hossa, Brian Campbell and Cristobal Huet. Two of the three players ended up being albatrosses that Bowman had to creatively discard, which has been common theme during the Bowman tenure.

I realize that Tallon signed those players, but they have John McDonough’s greasy stink all over them.

Making a contract disappear is part of being a professional sports executive, but taking losses (many times significant) in almost every instance should not be acceptable.

I digress, though. Huet was completely unnecessary at the time, and that is on Dale Tallon. If you look back, ten years ago, Huet was signed for the same salary that two time cup winning goalie Corey Crawford currently makes. The move reeks of a John McDonough public relations stunt.

Even though the Blackhawks had a young, fresh Corey Crawford ready to dip his toes in the NHL waters, Tallon ran out and grossly overpaid Huet to compete with incumbent Nikolai Khabibulin. Huet failed to beat out Khabibulin in his first year and then lost his job to Antti Niemi the following season. Eventually, Bowman was forced to loan Huet to a team in Switzerland (might as well been Siberia) to make the mistake disappear.

Hossa and Campbell worked much better at the time, but it was only three years into Campbell’s eight year $57 million deal that Bowman was forced to trade him to Florida and their old pal Dale Tallon for a bag full of bricks named Rostislav Olesz. A bag of bricks that Bowman would eventually be forced to use one of his two compliance buyout allowances to dispose of. You might label that a loss.

This was just the beginning of a laundry list of questionable moves that systematically forced the Blackhawks to give up valuable assets in exchange for teams to take on their messes.

In 2010, they were forced to trade Dustin Byfuglien (among others, because they couldn’t afford him) to Atlanta for Marty Reasoner, Joey Crabb, Jeremy Morin and two draft picks that resulted in Kevin Hayes and Justin Holl. This move still stings nine years later.

That same summer they traded Andrew Ladd (because they couldn’t afford him) to Atlanta for Ivan Vishnevskiy and a draft pick that resulted in AHL lifer Adam Clendening.

In 2011, they traded the rights to Troy Brouwer (because they couldn’t afford him) for a draft pick that resulted in Phillip Danault (whom they never fully developed and were forced to part with later) to Washington.

In 2014, they traded Nick Leddy (because Bowman waited to long to address serious cap issues until they were forced to scramble) the New York Islanders for T.J. Brennan, Ville Pokka and Anders Nilsson. Brennan is an AHL lifer, they never developed Pokka and were forced to trade Nilsson away.

Do what they say, say what they mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long but then
One thing leads to another, yeah, yeah, yeah
One thing leads to another

As I alluded to earlier, the biggest question is how did the Blackhawks get to this terrible state so fast? Questionable player contracts.

The biggest issues this organization currently face are the salaries of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Brent Seabrook. Those three, alone, account for $28 million against the salary cap. With that kind of structure, they will never be able to sign more than one high end free agent like they need. Why are these players (and several before them) overpaid? Because “hard driving, cap expert” Stan Bowman was tossing extra millions (and no movement clauses) around like they were nickels.

In theory, rewarding the players that brought you three championships is a commendable act. If that act doesn’t restrict you from future success.

Some of these contract snafus can be smoothed out by just taking into account that Duncan Keith, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Corey Crawford were underpaid for years. The problem with this is that a true “cap guru” should be able to sprinkle a few bargains with tightly negotiated, reasonable contracts. Something we are all watching in Toronto. You should not have a need to make excuses for people that are at the top of their respective profession.

Unless those snafus were a result of Bowman’s boss meddling in hockey decisions.

It would not be hard to imagine McDonough directing Bowman to re-sign Bryan Bickell as a public relations move, when most of the fan base had come to terms with the forward pricing himself out of Chicago.

Then it’s easy to believe
Somebody’s been lying to me
But when the wrong word goes in the right ear
I know why you’ve been lying to me
It’s getting rough, off the cuff I’ve got to say enough’s enough

The last issue that has led to the Blackhawks demise is the back office falling in love, and failing to develop mediocre prospects.  Selling the fans a huge bag of nonsense disguised as a well developed, NHL ready player that will make a difference, nightly.  As a result they cast unrealistic expectations on a young (many times fragile) hockey mind that takes them years to overcome.

The most recent example is Dylan Sikura.  He’s a fine player.  A raw, physically underdeveloped player, though.  Last winter Stan Bowman (with a straight face) told the Blackhawks fanbase that (essentially) they didn’t need to make a trade deadline acquisition because Sikura would fill the role.  They made sure that they signed him as fast as possible and threw him to the wolves.  He came out and had three assist (two of which were secondary) in five games.

Maybe it they were honest with the fans and convey the fact that Sikura was coming from playing at a level several steps below the NHL, he is physically underdeveloped and it might take him some time to adjust the fans wouldn’t have been on #SikuraWatch for the first 3 months of the season, and they would accept him developing in the AHL.

Instead, the team and the media throw out this ridiculous public relations hype that makes the casual fan think Dylan Sikura is the next Patrick Kane.  He’s not and never will be.  Let him develop.  What has rushing a player ever accomplished?  For every Alex DeBrincat that jumps right into the lineup (even though his first 20 games were a struggle), there are five Marko Danos or Bill Sweats or Akim Alius or Kyle Beaches or Mark McNeills.  BE PATIENT AND STOP BLENDING YOUNG KID’S MINDS UP!

Remember the hype about Wouter Peeters being the next Blackhawks goalie and how they were very carefully developing him in the USHL?  This was just over 12 months ago.  Since then, he had a decent first USHL season and has essentially disappeared from existence.  Three games this fall and disappeared from the Lincoln Stars roster after October 5th.

Bigger the harder he falls
But when the wrong antidote is like a bulge on the throat
You run for cover in the heat why don’t they

Do what they say, say what they mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long but then
One thing leads to another, yeah, yeah
One thing (one thing) leads to another………

The moral of the story is that the lying and delusions in this back office are now crippling this organization. John McDonough has created a culture that is full of self aggrandizing nonsense above all else. It is time that Rocky Wirtz stopped buying into this hype and hired some real hockey architects rather than a bunch of public relations clowns running around the front office patting themselves on the back.

The post Blackhawks Analysis: One Thing Leads to Another appeared first on The Rink.