Today was the day that the Chicago Blackhawks met with the media to discuss their 2016-17 and what the future will hold. Many of these days in recent memory have been positive. The Blackhawks were either celebrating a championship or at the very least a quality run to the conference finals. This year they are coming off their most embarrassing playoff performance of the Toews and Kane era. They were swept out of the playoffs in the first round. It is the second consecutive year they have failed to make it out of the first round. Their general manager is not happy about this.
I don't blame Stan Bowman for being angry. It is the natural emotion to have after two seasons of not meeting expectations. It will be how he channels that anger that will either shut down the Blackhawks impressive dynasty or keep the door open for a number of seasons.
Can Stan Bowman learn from the Pittsburgh Penguins? He is going to have to because right now the Chicago Blackhawks are the 2013-14 Pittsburgh Penguins. They are a team that relies heavily on a small group of talented players and when those players hit a cold patch the other depth players aren't capable of supplementing the offense. When the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 2013 Jonathan Toews only scored three times in 23 games. That is a low number for a player of his caliber. The reason Chicago was able to survive Toews' goal slump was that there were plenty of options to pick up the slack. Fast forward to the present and Toews only has one playoff goal in the last two years. The depth isn't there to pick up the slack and the team can't get out of the first round. This should sound all too familiar to Penguins fans.
Chicago fans need to brace themselves for the volume of bad narratives that are about to storm your city. Supposed analysts are going to blame your good players instead of the players that don't provide anything. The people that form these narratives don't understand just how hard it is to score goals in the playoffs and it's not just a try harder or bring more intensity kind of thing.
Being top heavy won't prevent you from winning playoff series all the time, but it is great deterrent from being a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. Right now the Blackhawks are top heavy.
The best way to keep a dynasty window open is to identify the core players and lock them up. Chicago has done that, but they've gone overboard. The time to pay Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane all the money was always going to come. Both of those players making a combined 12M was what facilitated a lot of Bowman's success. Those players are now making 21M combined. That changes the entire dynamic of the Blackhawks salary cap. It is also fair to point out that the Blackhawks duo is not as good as the Crosby and Malkin one in Pittsburgh. So right away things were going to be difficult in this chapter of the Toews/Kane era. Less money to play with means less wiggle room for mistakes.
Bowman has already made a few. He has handcuffed his ability to move players if he needs to
Ian continues:
Kane (28) - $10.5M (NMC) - 2023
Toews (28) - $10.5M (NMC) - 2023
Seabrook (32) - $6.875M (NMC) - 2024
Crawford (32) - $6M (M-NTC) - 2020
Keith (33) - $5.538M (NMC) - 2023
Hossa (38) - $5.275 (NMC) - 2021
Anisimov (28) - $4.55 (NMC) - 2021
Hjalmarsson (29) - $4.1 (M-NTC) - 2019
So, sure, changes can be made, but it's going to take moving some guys that are central to that team and Bowman will need their consent.
That's a lot of money tied up into players who are all out of their statistical primes and will be playing well past their usefulness. Based on this Chicago has little time to correct things. It can be done. It just won't be easy.
One of the ways to get back to being a true Stanley Cup contender is to stop chasing the past. In recent years Chicago has tried to relive old glory by bringing back players like Andrew Ladd and Johnny Oduya. Pittsburgh learned that lesson the hard way with Rob Scuderi (who coincidently was traded to the Blackhawks) and hanging on to veterans from the Cup winning team that lost their usefulness IE: Brooks Orpik, Craig Adams.
This can also come in the form of giving lucrative contract extensions to non-essential personnel like Brent Seabrook and Bryan Bickell. These kinds of contracts have consequences and it is why the Blackhawks lost players like Brandon Saad, Teuvo Teravainen, and to a lesser extent Patrick Sharp. It can't be stated enough that with Toews/Kane making 21M instead of 12M mistakes like that can't be made without real consequences.
Another issue that contending teams can suffer from is wasting futures at the trade deadline for depth players. Pittsburgh was fascinated with this for a few years and it didn't do them any good. The most obvious example was the 2013 trade deadline when Ray Shero gave up a first round pick for Jarome Iginla to play the off-wing for the first time in his career and two(!) second round picks for the corpse of Douglas Murray.
The Blackhawks started to do these things. They traded away their first round pick in consecutive years to acquire the services of Antoine Vermette and Andrew Ladd respectively. These were not things that were necessary. Yes, Chicago did win the Stanley Cup after trading for Vermette, but let's not pretend like Vermette's 44.9% possession rate was something that they couldn't have received from a less costly and more savvy addition. Chicago received two points in seven playoff games from Ladd. Getting players who can contribute on ELC contracts is the lifeblood for contending teams to stay contending. You lower the odds of that happening when trading away your best draft picks for rental players. Striking gold with a guy like Artemi Panarin on the Russian free agent market is not commonplace. Most times this is something that needs to come from the draft.
Don't have a fascination with playing talentless grit. It will get you nowhere. Pittsburgh loved trotting out players like Craig Adams, Tanner Glass, Zach Sill, Max Lapierre, and Joe Vitale. It was a terrible idea. Chicago hasn't been nearly as bad at this, but you still see a guy like Jordin Tootoo getting a jersey on a nightly basis. Stop doing that. There's always a better option in the AHL.
Stop overvaluing "experience". It is overrated. The Blackhawks didn't win their first Stanley Cup of the Toews/Kane era because of experience. They won it because they had very good hockey players. Here is a look at their better players from 2009-10 and their ages
The majority of Chicago's important players are 26 or under. It doesn't mean you can't have players with experience. Marian Hossa and Brian Campbell had plenty of experience. The key factor was that they were very good, not experienced. Don't be scared to use your younger players because they haven't gained experience yet. If they're good, they're good. What if Pittsburgh didn't give chances to Conor Sheary or Bryan Rust last year and instead plugged in a veteran with experience. They could have easily done that, but didn't.
Luck is also involved in this process. You can acquire all the best players, but if they aren't healthy to suit up they can't help you. Chicago has been the most fortunate team on the injury front during the Toews/Kane era
There isn't really anything specific the Blackhawks can do here. They just have to hope it continues down this path.
I've outlined some of the issues that Chicago is facing moving forward, but there are some positive signs for them moving forward. Joel Quenneville did change the way he went about player usage highlighted by this piece by Travis Yost of TSN:
There was a noticeable uptick in the quality of Chicago's play at the halfway mark of the season.
The Andrew Shaw trade is a good example of the Blackhawks not marrying themselves to an expensive non-essential depth piece. In year's prior they might have been the ones to give Shaw the contract the Canadiens gave him. Instead they acquired two second round picks to help replenish what they lost when trading away their first rounders. One of those second round picks was Alex DeBrincat.
The Chicago Blackhawks are at an incredibly important fork in the road. Their general manager is going to have a lot of important decisions to make. The room for error is incredibly small given their salary cap situation. The new Toews/Kane contracts cranked up the difficulty level for Stan Bowman. The situation isn't hopeless, but at the same time the odds of nailing all of these important decisions isn't very high either.
The blueprint for Chicago's future success and/or failures can be taken from the Pittsburgh Penguins. They can either repeat the mistakes that cost Pittsburgh multiple years of the Crosby/Malkin era or they could learn from that same team who changed their approach and fixed their self-inflicted problems.
The Chicago Blackhawks situation will be a fascinating one to watch unfold the next few years. It really could go either way.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»