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So much to talk about this morning, and none of it particularly pleasant for Hawks fans.

I'll start it off with something I tweeted during the game last night: "This is bigger than Mike Kitchen. Please."

Sure, there are a lot of individual scapegoats up and down the roster, behind the bench and in the front office. But what ails the Hawks is bigger than any one person, and in my opinion, bigger than just the rest of this season.

This organization is at a crossroads.

It can continue to fool itself, doubling down on bad player bets, redoubling instruction in an on-ice system that doesn't fit the talent (or vice versa). Or it can make some changes—as I've said here previously— judiciously and without any sacred cows.

The two biggest personal cultprits in this mess have to be GM Stan Bowman and Coach Joel Quenneville.

Bowman has arrogantly (some might say gullibly) fallen too deeply in love too quickly with certain players: Nick Leddy, Corey Crawford (a convenient default after pronouncing in the Summer of 2010 that Antti Niemi wasn't "going anywhere"), Bryan Bickell, Michal Frolik. Let's be clear, the trade-off for deciding to rely on these players was losing Tomas Kopecky, Troy Brouwer and Niemi.

Some will say Bowman couldn't afford to keep those guys. Well, he had $5 million plus under the cap this summer from trading Bryan Campbell (because he apparently thought Leddy could at least begin to fill Campbell's shoes). Sure, he dealt Campbell a few hours after trading Brouwer—but he could have kept Brouwer (and his 20 goals/200+ hits a season).

And he did nothing with all that cap savings, well, aside from whiffing on a 4 year contract to Steve Montador.

Quenneville is a great coach. But he has also had a limited "shelf-life" everywhere he's been. And it appears, the expiration date on his Blackhawk label was somewhere in 2011. Really, look no further than Michal Frolik to see that Quenneville has burned out his own message. It's not whether Frolik is as good today as he was when scoring 20+ goals over each of two seasons in Florida. It's that he's not as good today as when he arrived in Chicago a year ago— not even close. This staff used to bring players along and get the most out of them. Now, whether it's Frolik, Crawford, Bickell, Leddy, even Patrick Kane, players seem to be regressing.

Part of the loss of Brouwer, a good NHL player and certainly better today than many of the aforementioned, has to go on Quenneville, who clearly had no taste for the previous #22. Quenneville also likely deserves blame for bringing in "his guy" Andrew Brunette as Brouwer's replacement.

But that's how we got here. Where do we go now?

Yesterday alone, the Hawks were linked to Evgeni Nabokov, Nikolai Khabibulin, Josh Harding and Derek Roy (likely among others) in trade rumors. Let me say this: based on my experience chasing Hawk rumors and what I see (or don't see) happening right now, those rumors are coming from the other teams or the nether regions of the sources' anatomies. The Hawks are on strict lockdown as only the Hawks go on lockdown.

And at this point, if you changed nothing else and tried to fix the Hawks via trade, you'd have to turn over 1/3 of the roster— in a market where Bowman can't seem to acquire a box of tape. Not happening.

A goalie upgrade would be great. But goaltending by itself is not the entirety of the problem. At minimum, the Hawks likely need an upgrade in goal, 1-2 NHL defensemen and a forward who is tough to play against.

What the Hawks really need is a kick in the pants, a psychological makeover and a painstakingly honest evaluation of their talent and the character of ALL their players.

Which leads me to the other rumor circulating yesterday, that had Sr. VP Scotty Bowman taking over as interim head coach for a fired Quenneville.

Now before you launch Lucky Charms out your nose at the thought of the 77 year-old Bowman behind an NHL bench, let me say this: if he is up to it physically, there probably would be no better interim coach to right the ship in the short term and—more importantly— provide an honest evaluation of each player on and off the ice.

Let's be clear, while there's a valid issue surrounding the supporting cast, this team has enough talent to compete. This is an issue of character. No living coaches have been around the block as much as Scotty Bowman.

As I've said here before, the elder Bowman personifies the hockey bona fides of this organization in the wake of Dale Tallon's dismissal. Team President John McDonough and his many functionaries need to listen to him. If they don't, this mess is all on them.

Another option would be bringing in a completely dispassionate third party outsider to both coach and assess the talent— but who at this point?

Maybe Ed Olczyk, who has enough going on career-wise beyond Chicago, to politically be able to deliver the hard news necessary here. The trade off is: he was a short term coach once in his career. How much can his word be relied on versus say the elder Bowman?

Another problem is a serious lack of toughness on this roster. John Scott is a 5 minute a game player. Andrew Shaw weighs 175 pounds. Jamal Mayers can only give you so many minutes a night.

Rockford Ice Hog Brandon Segal is not going to make anyone's highlight reels but he has nearly 100 NHL games and is a tough guy to play against. Another Hog, 6'3" 220 pound Brandon Bollig, can get up and down the ice and he will keep other teams' nonsense to a minimum.

When did you see the most life from the Hawks in last night's 3-0 loss? When the incredibly tough Shaw won a bout with Phoenix' Kyle Chipchura.

This team is like the "Schlep Rock" character from the ill-fated new Flintstones of the 1970's— it has a permanent black cloud of defeat over its head. This team— the Chicago Blackhawks—20 months removed from being one of the greatest single season NHL teams perhaps of all time.

Finally, Rocky Wirtz, perhaps with Scotty Bowman on permanent speed dial, needs to take a long look at this entire organization. Because the Hawks themselves have gone to great lengths to call their recent successes "organizational." And the other side of that coin, the other direction that knife cuts, is that this failure is also organizational.

Many feel Bowman was elevated to the GM role because he would work within McDonough's desired structure, rife with different executives and decisions made by larger committees.

It can be said he is a symptom, and not necessarily the entirety of the problem when it comes to personnel decisions.

Time for a change, folks. Again, if I hear of trade, I'll let you know. But even if something materializes there, the weight of evidence suggests, more is necessary.

Thanks for reading,


JJ

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