What's the Blackhawks One Goal?

November 27, 2018

It wasn’t too long ago when the Chicago Bears and Bulls were both lousy but Chicagoans always had a good Chicago Blackhawks team to enjoy during the winter. The Bulls are still bad while the Bears are the feel-good story of the year. The Blackhawks will most likely miss the playoffs for the second consecutive year.

With fans jumping off the bandwagon, General Manager Stan Bowman sits in his office negotiating the salary cap. His tenure includes three Stanley Cup championships. The core for these teams was put together by former General Manager Dale Tallon. Bowman did add minor pieces to the last two Stanley Cup winners who then were salary cap victims. Since 2009, Bowman has signed only one marque player, Alex DeBrincat. Other draft picks have been busts, showing a lack in talent evaluation.

Two years ago when the Hawks got swept out of the playoffs by the Nashville Predators, Bowman was not pleased and said changes had to be made. He then engineered two bad trades.

Artemi Panarin for former Blackhawk Brandon Saad, who Bowman had let get away (would you believe it had something to do with the salary cap)? On paper this didn’t look bad. On the ice it did. Bowman let go a 30-goal scorer and depleted one of the best lines in hockey with Patrick Kane and Artem Anisimov. Saad was placed on a line in hopes of rejuvenating Jonathan Toews. This didn’t work and Saad just recently returned from the fourth line.

The second trade had to be the worst since Phil Esposito was traded to the Bruins for Pit Martin.*  It was another move related to the salary cap. The Hawks sent their best defenseman, Niklas Hjalmarsson, to the Phoenix Coyotes for Connor Murphy, who wasn’t good enough to avoid being a heathy scratch multiple times.

The loss of Marion Hossa and goalie Corey Crawford contributed to the down 2017-2018 season. Stan Bowman’s answer this time was to stand pat. The only new face is 19-year-old defenseman Henri Kokharju, who may turn out to be very good. He [a1] fired a great coach, Joel Quenville, for no apparent reason. He was not the cause of them being bad. The Hawks are stuck with the albatrosses Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith, whose skills have diminished. They have forwards who can’t score and have puck possession issues, which puts more pressure on the defense. The best way to beat this team is to play short-handed. The Hawks have the the worst power play I have ever seen.

New coach Jeremy Colliton has his work cut out for him. So far he has made the mistake of reuniting Keith and Seabrook.  Neither can push someone out of the crease and they give away the puck way too often. Playing Saad, Kane and Toews together leaves the Hawks with no other line that can score.  Alex DeBrincat, the only other goal scorer, has no one to pass him the puck. This doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon.

*Phil Esposito had a five-year stretch where he scored 336 goals. That’s an average of 67 per year.