If The Blackhawks Don't Fire Stan After This Seasons Well...I Might Have To Ban Myself

Another gut punch last night. The 4th in a row for the Blackhawks. I want off of the roller coaster. A week ago I was absolutely addicted to this team. Looking forward to that next high. Now, it feels kind of hopeless. 6 points out and trending in the wrong way as the deadline approaches. I was watching the post-game last night and a reporter off-camera asked Patrick Kane if he wanted to see Stan add to the team at the deadline. Kane gave the answer he's supposed to give which is (look away from the camera and shake your head in confusion and frustration) "I only worry about the things I can control". Good answer. Right answer. Allow me to go into a little more detail. The guys who are carrying this team are the ones who have always carried the team. There isn't a player out there right now who makes the Hawks a contender. Even if Stan were to go out and make a move to give the team some gas I am sure it would look something like this

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Stan tried to do that in the summer. He signed Lehner which has worked out very well. He also made four trades acquiring Shaw, deHaan, Maatta, and Nylander. I love Shaw and deHaan. I do. Having said that...neither one of them was ever going to play a full 82 games. Shaw has never done it. DeHaan has done it once. I am not saying acquiring those guys was a bad move. It's just that if you're adding guys like that you also need to have insurance policies and organizational depth...the Hawks don't. The Nylander-Jokiharju and Kahun-Maatta trades have made the Hawks worse and more expensive. Maatta for the most part has been a fine player. He's not worth $4M. 

So that is how we got here. I don't want excuses about injury prone players getting injured. I don't want to hear any more excuses. The Blackhawks latest stretch likely sealed their fate which sucks because that means we have Stan at the controls for another deadline

A goalie, Gustafsson, Caggiula(?)...the Hawks don't have a ton to offer up and they don't have a GM capable of executing a deal or righting the ship. It's time for management to move on. Realistically, even if the Blackhawks make the playoffs they should fire Bowman. No playoff series wins in 5 years when you've been given Toews, Kane, Keith, and Crawford is a sin nobody should be able to survive. The hockey ops department is broken. There's an inability to evaluate their own players. That's how you get swindled in trades repeatedly. I don't know when the last time Stan made a good trade was. I would say Strome, but Colliton made him a healthy scratch in favor of one of Stan's failures so what do I know. The end is near. I hope. It's time for fresh ideas and new faces.