I was on an airplane for the first COL game and had family over for the second, so I didn't watch a minute of the last two debacles or read through the boards or any tweets (it was actually kind of nice). With what I am reading today (line combos, players that are up from RFD, etc. it really seems like they are throwing crap at the wall and seeing what happens.

Not that my opinion means anything, and again I didn't see the games, but how does a team get absolutely pasted two games in a row by the same team. You get pasted once, you look at the things you did wrong (and that they did right) and address those immediately. It may have simply been back to back bad goaltending performances, but there is something fundamentally wrong with that happening.
- Chunk

One good reason is you play them without your best defenseman in the lineup after the first period of game 1.

Keith sat after middle of second in game one and missed game 2. For those that love to bash on Keith, there is your result. They probably don't win with him in the lineup, but probably less than 13 goals against

My cleaning house comment was not directed at players, it was directed towards coaching staff, training staff, scouting etc....
- walleyeb1

Why are you keeping the players who will no longer do what is necessary to win? The ones who let the Preds take their lunch money without a fight? And cry to management if the coach is a big meannie?

Great write up Tyler. I was very optimistic about Chicago looking at the moves they made because on paper this team should be much better.

Everything hinged upon the players who stepped up last year having career years doing the same this year.

Saad and Nylander playing away from toews produced results now their non existent.

Kubalick is mia

Toews is washed up here are his numbers and for what Chicago is paying him , clearly he isn't remotely living up to his contract.

26 GP
4 goals
9 assists
13 points
-1

That's pathetic and the excuses and lack of emotion shown by toews are no longer can be excepted.

JC while he might be a very knowledgeable guy with all his analytics
His ability to coach and get these guys motivated and playing better is non exsistent.

It's time for Rocky to Fire Stan and rebuild this team.
Even if Chicago made a wildcard spot they haven't shown they can play consistent and keep up with contender teams
- Taylorst1

toews could never live up to that contract when it took effect in 2015-16. He lived up to it from 2009-2015. That's the way it works in this here NHL.

That was Kane but anyways.
- rpeters01

Maybe I was just anticipating that when news came out. Skin condition clears up by spring time type thing.

Bowman on vacation, what is he doing? More like not doing, his job
- BetweenTheDots

My bad, didn't realize Lehner is out tonight

That's the ticket - fire them all, THEN ask who is available and better!
- mohel

That’s not what I’m sayin either, first I qualified it by saying this is a move you make in the off-season, not mid-season. I’m not advocating for firing “them all”, a new GM would have to evaluate the situation and decide who stays and who goes.

Why are you keeping the players who will no longer do what is necessary to win? The ones who let the Preds take their lunch money without a fight? And cry to management if the coach is a big meannie?
- mohel

Not exempting them, that would be a decision for the new GM.

Hey Chunk happy Monday . I don't disagree with your point that this team is saturated with NMC more so than any other team and it takes 2 too tango i.e player agreeing to a trade.

Imo Rocky , Stan and MC D are all heavily invested in this core and not excepting at least that's the perception that is being put out their that somehow they can still somehow make the playoffs and because of the cores past accomplishments they can lead Chicago to another cup.

Maybe you don't get a tremendous amount back , but even prospects , picks and cap relief for future use is better than wasting more time not achieving the end result a young fast , talented fully stocked team.

Look back at Colorado I believe it was either 2009 or 2010 or 11 season when Colorado had a ton of young talent but moved all those pieces , hit rock bottom but eventually many years later you see the end result . They look fantastic and dangerous.
MY point is the courage it took to trade off some good players .

Look at Anaheim they are a better team or at least playing better than chicago
- Taylorst1

My take is as follows:
1) I don't know about the total money tied up , but they do not have more NMC's than other teams in the league. My issue with your contention is that you seem to think that simply by having a different GM, they can magically come in and trade these guys (and in doing so, solve all of this team's ills).
2) Rocky, Stan and McD probably do (and should) have SOME loyalty to the core, as they are a big part of why the team is still making money. At the end of the day, they are responsible for staying profitable.
3) There is not one single way to win a cup. There have been proven to be multiple ways. You can't perpetually be young fast and talented. The young guys need time to develop, and thus get older... and as we've seen ultimately slower. COL looks good now, but take a look at them in 5 years (after three cup wins) and see where they stand.

I agree with you that nobody is going to take bad contracts off your hands unless a bad one is coming back, but lets dig a little deeper on the 6.

Crawford - Contract expires after this season
Keith - 3 years after this one, @$5.5 cap hit is not out of line for production
Kane - worth every penny. Will never get comparable value in a trade.
Z. Smith - one year @ $3.25 after this one. can be buried, traded or bought out
Toews - 3 left after this year. Overpaid @ $10.5 but still at least a 2C on his worst days
Seabrook - 4 left @ almost $7mil. Almost impossible to trade given that he doesn't want to waive his NMC and even moreso because no team wants to take on his cap hit when he is barely a 3rd pairing D man at this point.

With Crow coming off the books and Smith disposable if needed the Hawks are not in the same Cap hell as other teams may be. Sure the overpayment on Toews and the anchor of Seabrooks contract probably cost you a solid $5mil/year player (whomever that may be), but if Boquist, Dach, Beaudin, Mitchell, whomever are able to produce at a decent level on their ELC's the Hawks will be OK.

Problem now is not the cap, its the consistent level of play.
- TheTrob

Hhhhmmmm, logic....

Good post.

I was on an airplane for the first COL game and had family over for the second, so I didn't watch a minute of the last two debacles or read through the boards or any tweets (it was actually kind of nice). With what I am reading today (line combos, players that are up from RFD, etc. it really seems like they are throwing crap at the wall and seeing what happens.

Not that my opinion means anything, and again I didn't see the games, but how does a team get absolutely pasted two games in a row by the same team. You get pasted once, you look at the things you did wrong (and that they did right) and address those immediately. It may have simply been back to back bad goaltending performances, but there is something fundamentally wrong with that happening.
- Chunk

1st game vs Avs some terrible turnovers and they all of a sudden are allowing shots right down Broadway in both games. Forward doesn't get back by then all 3 forwards for Avs in our own zone, if the initial shot down Broadway didn't go in which it usually did, then they got the rebound below the goalie for an easy score. Both games were over by the 1st period.

Brent Sopel on Marc Crawford - starts around 1hr:02m

https://www.barstoolsport...brent-sopel-teddy-purcell
- pdx2ord

Yeah I listened to that, pretty damning assessment on Marc Crawford. Not sure he survives this.

One good reason is you play them without your best defenseman in the lineup after the first period of game 1.

Keith sat after middle of second in game one and missed game 2. For those that love to bash on Keith, there is your result. They probably don't win with him in the lineup, but probably less than 13 goals against
- TheTrob

I'm on the side that Keith is still our best D-man and one of the top 20 in the league. That said, 12 goals in two games is a fundamental breakdown. If anything, after the first game, you say F-it and concentrate on D. Again, what do I know, just a bystander throwing my 2 cents.

Do what most of us do, just scroll past his posts unread
- TheTrob

I knew I couldn't be the only one to do that.

We just got through a quite brilliant analysis that showed the Hawks DO NOT have an abundance of NMC compared to the other teams in the league.

Do facts have no relevance to you?
- scottak

Not so far.

Careful, you'll be called a complete waste of a human being.

Vlad being on LTIR allows the Blues to exceed the cap by $7,500,000.
- walleyeb1

Until Tank comes back. Then what?

The LTIR how many players or percent is a team allowed to have on LTIR? Also if Chicago doesn't have cap space wouldn't that be Stans responsibility to assure that he is managing it properly?
- Taylorst1

Yes if we play the hossa game and leave him there till playoffs start.
- Gerk

That's the Kane game, chief. The Hossa game was another scam, eh?

Per Tracy Meyers...
Hawks go with 11F and 6D tonight. Not enough cap space to call up a forward.
Shaw out for tonight, Strome feeling better, but out tonight.
- boilermaker100

Wow, what a clown show.

To everyone who wants to fire everyone not named players, I'll ask the following question: Stan was put in his job as "the future of the Chicago Blackhawks." Rocky even had to pay Tallon not to sue him when he said at the time the move was made "you keep your young up and coming people and get rid of the old ones," to paraphrase.

Stan did not build this team. What Stan did was cut and paste them to two more Cups after Tallon's original creation. We will never know how much McD had to do with all the bad contracts or what would have happened if Stan had played hardball instead. Lombardi didn't have the balls to do it either and LA now in their second regime hanging on by a thread no better than when they cleaned house the first time.

Why would you not give Stan and Co. the chance to build their first team which is going to mean old core gone and new core developed - more than a couple years? Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

I'm on the side that Keith is still our best D-man and one of the top 20 in the league. That said, 12 goals in two games is a fundamental breakdown. If anything, after the first game, you say F-it and concentrate on D. Again, what do I know, just a bystander throwing my 2 cents.
- Chunk

Hawks have had matchup issues against the Avs for a few seasons. A mixture of Size, speed and mostly their style of play gives the Hawks problems. With Keith out and maybe playing a bit hobbled while he was skating, the Avs just abused the back-end. Gus is useless in the D zone, Seabrook and Maata can't win a footrace to any loose puck, so depending on the pairings you could have one effective pair with deHaan and Murphy, or split them up and have 2 so-so pairings.

Bowman on vacation, what is he doing? More like not doing, his job
- BetweenTheDots

He is. It on vacation. Bowman cannot jump each instance of losses or poor play..

I feel like some veterans went over Bowman and Colliton because they were concerned how well they could perform.in Colliton's system.

Bowman made sound off season moves. He cannot fix each problem right away. We loose to speed teams. The 2020 draft hopefully provides a future too center. Bowman"s past salary overpayment to Seabrook and his + Toews slippage in performance is not easily remidied. You have to accept that the Bowman's ledger has both good and bad moves. And Bowman has tried to keep the team"s core players here. In the next two years you will see the need to be fine with both Seabrook a d Toews gains momentum. The best approach to get a team back in playoffs is to draft well and develop well.

Now in two years you might have a case to replace both Colliton and Bowman. The team will be in a position to possibly take a step forward. And Bowman needs to have enough toughness on the roster. This Bowman/Colliton system can be argued but the fairest evaluation is to have the type of players to make it work. Enough other teams use a version if it. We however had unfit top players (DeBrincat/Strome) and a bad defense. Moreover two b*tches worried about how well they can look and if they stay lineup

How much better would any other coach do. Stay positive. Follow AEL_FOX reports. We have drafted well

Seems like it is once again time for the IR and LTIR information to be shared once again.

Putting a player on IR opens up a roster spot. That's it. A team still needs to have the cap space available to absorb the full cap hit before the accrual process can begin. So putting Shaw, Keith or Lehner would do the Hawks no good.


Putting a player on LTIR does give a team cap relief in rudimentary terms. However, once a player is put on LTIR, said player must miss at least 10 games or a certain number of days. I think it is 30 but not sure about that part.

Until Tank comes back. Then what?
- mohel

Then the call ups go back down, actually perhaps sooner than that. I’m not sure what the timeline for the Blues players on IR is. But my guess is they will come off IR long before that.

To everyone who wants to fire everyone not named players, I'll ask the following question: Stan was put in his job as "the future of the Chicago Blackhawks." Rocky even had to pay Tallon not to sue him when he said at the time the move was made "you keep your young up and coming people and get rid of the old ones," to paraphrase.

Stan did not build this team. What Stan did was cut and paste them to two more Cups after Tallon's original creation. We will never know how much McD had to do with all the bad contracts or what would have happened if Stan had played hardball instead. Lombardi didn't have the balls to do it either and LA now in their second regime hanging on by a thread no better than when they cleaned house the first time.

Why would you not give Stan and Co. the chance to build their first team which is going to mean old core gone and new core developed - more than a couple years? Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
- rpeters01

Tallon paid off not to Sue? Where does that come from? Never heard that before.

Also, while McD may be a control freak, I'm not sure how much he has to do with contracts and any type of Hockey operations regardless of the narrative that people on here like to spin.

Hawks have had matchup issues against the Avs for a few seasons. A mixture of Size, speed and mostly their style of play gives the Hawks problems. With Keith out and maybe playing a bit hobbled while he was skating, the Avs just abused the back-end. Gus is useless in the D zone, Seabrook and Maata can't win a footrace to any loose puck, so depending on the pairings you could have one effective pair with deHaan and Murphy, or split them up and have 2 so-so pairings.
- TheTrob

While the speed was a problem, it was the fact the Hawks were getting shoved all over the ice that led to most of the goals the Avs scored. Every team in the league knows you can work this team over below the goal line. Special K, Gus and Maatta being the biggest culprits but far from alone. Kampf may be the only forward who can consistently win a board battle is a huge problem.

This team needs a new strength and conditioning coach. What may have worked before is no longer working. It is sickening to watch the Hawks get their asses shoved all over the ice.