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The 2012-2013 Chicago Blackhawks were a great hockey team.

No one, except the Detroit Red Wings, really challenged them that hard on their way to the Stanley Cup.

Even before the resulting parade that summer, the Hawk front office had begun dismantling that team a bit—due to salary cap constraints and impending free agency.

Soon, Dave Bolland and Michal Frolik were gone. The following summer, Nick Leddy was traded away.

So it wasn’t terribly surprising when the Hawks just didn’t have quite enough to outlast the Kings in the 2014 Western Conference Finals. Or when one injury on defense forced the Hawks into a bit of a tailspin this season, exacerbating Leddy’s absence.

In the salary cap era, that’s the difference between a good team, like the Red Wings in 2013, and a great one, like the Blackhawks that year. Depth, role players, getting the utmost out of the roster.

This season, just a week or so ago, things looked awfully bleak when Patrick Kane went down versus the Panthers with what everyone and their brother knew at that moment was a serious injury.

But the silver lining to that cloud was a giant chunk of cap space cleared by putting Kane on long term IR. And rather than sit back and retreat into a “we like our team/wait til next year” posture, the organization seized an opportunity and went shopping.

What they came away with was interesting.

In exchange for 4th line RW Ben Smith, a decent but not elite defense prospect in Klas Dahlbeck and a couple of draft picks, the Hawks added:

- veteran puck-rushing defenseman Kimmo Timonen
- 2-way center Antoine Vermette
- 4th line C/W Andrew Desjardins

An argument can be made that thee three acquisitions “approximate” Leddy, Bolland and Frolik—and that last summer’s acquisition, Brad Richards, replaces/upgrades Michal Handzus.

Sure, the team is missing Johnny Oduya and Kane. And each is a significant hole. But both are also due back, sooner (Oduya) or later (Kane).

And that’s the $64,000 question: how far can this team go as composed, in the absence of Kane, the league’s leading scorer when he went down?

I don’t have an answer for that.

I do know a couple of things—this team now has a lot of options, and really five guys you can call pure centers, three of whom are 55%+ on faceoffs.

And it’s funny, the Hawks played with more enthusiasm last night than they have all year. The psychological effect of these moves was plain to see. The team feels new life—the front office stepped up and delivered when the opportunity arose.

You can argue it almost doesn’t matter if Bowman got the right players or not—that he went out and went big to get “quality” veteran help—in and of itself—might have a huge ly positive effect on this team going forward.

Carolina isn’t the toughest test out there. On the other hand, Vermette and Timonen both looked a little lost—still adjusting to new teammates and a new system. Timonen hadn’t played any hockey all year. And Desjardins hasn’t even shown up yet.

There’s a fair amount of regular season hockey to be played and then the playoffs, where the Hawks will face a tough road out of the West. Much can happen.

But it appears Bowman made the right big move by going all in—and now it remains to be seen if each individual smaller move plays out, and plays out long enough for #88 to return.

All for now,


JJ



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