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Jim Montgomery Has Been Hired By The Blues. My Dream Is Dead. The Hawks Missed The Boat

I've been banging the Monty drum for a while. He has a bright future in the league so long as he is sober and it sounds like he is. He has won at every level and you're seeing his Dallas Stars with the foundation he built in the Stanley Cup Final. He is going to be a TREMENDOUS asset to the Blues who already have a strong team and a veteran staff. You know could use a guy like that...the Chicago Blackhawks and this is the type of thing that drives me crazy. I know the Hawks seem to like Colliton internally. Maybe it's because Stan finally has a guy behind the bench who will take his marching orders. I don't know. What I do know is that the team has been largely terrible in his two years as a coach. Lost defensively. Atrocious power play. Inability to look at the roster and put his players in the best possible position to win. Inability to dream up a system and then communicate it in a way digestible and easy for his players to know their responsibility in given situations. Hence they finished 31st in like every important defensive statistic. I am rambling now. My point is that if you didn't want to fire Colliton at this point, that is fine I guess because the powers that be have more direct knowledge of the situation than I do. HOWEVAH...NOBODY should look at his Colliton's track record and feel 100% confident that he is the guy to turn this around. It'd be wise to have a competent alternative in-house that the team can turn to when things go to shit again next year. Making Monty an assistant to Colliton would make Colliton a better coach and if it didn't then the Blackhawks would be able to get a good feel for Monty and his sobriety by having him on payroll. A low-risk, high-reward hire. Instead...your division rival just got arguably the best coach available and will be shoving it up your ass for the foreseeable future. 

The other that drives me crazy about this Monty situation is that I know for a FACT that Stan likes Monty a lot. In fact, I believe that if Stan had been given clearance from McDonough to fire Joel after the 2017-18 season he would've hired Jim Montgomery that summer instead of seeing him leave DU for Dallas. John said no, Stan snuck his errand boy in the backdoor and fired Joel after putting together a team with guys like Kunitz and Brandon Manning.  

Monty now gets to live in St Louis where he used to play. I think his wife is from there. The Blues get better. Berube has an A+ assistant. They'll win at a high level again next year, they'll all get raises, and Monty will likely have his pick of NHL jobs. Sad to see the Hawks miss here. That shouldn't happen.